Matthew's Big Blog of Adventure!

How to Write a Paper

2010-10-23T21:30:00.003-04:00

PAPER TITLE

An introductory paragraph with a story or an example or an attention-getting statement is appropriate here. Next, we transition into briefly describing the main parts of the paper. This leads almost naturally into a combination clincher/thesis statement which says the main point of the paper along with an encapsulation of the main points.

The first sentence of the first content paragraph clearly states the first idea. Subsequent sentences provide supporting information for the main point. Examples and illustrations fall naturally into place after these explanation statements. By interspersing examples and statements, the paper will become more readable. Rephrasing the main point of the first idea in a rousing clincher sentence should be the last thing the reader see in a paragraph, giving the reader a solid sense of finishing a thought.

Not only should the first idea be clearly stated and set up in a nice paragraph all its own, in the first sentence of the next paragraph, you should have a transition statement that relates the next idea to the previous in some way. After that introduction, include supporting material. Then additional examples, then more sub-points, etc. End, again, with a nice “clincher” sentence.

The main thesis is restated in the first sentence of the final paragraph to remind the reader of the whole point of the research paper. This gives a sense of closure and through all the highs and lows of amazing prose which you have written (and they have enjoyed) they will feel like they have gone through a journey with you, and have come out a richer, more knowledgeable person from it. They will love you, they will forget your minor sins of shoddy research and grammar, and thanks to a rousing final sentence, give you an A in the class.

Converting PNG to GIF with Gimp's Script-fu

2010-09-13T21:01:00.003-04:00

After wrestling for an hour with The GNU Image Manipulation Program's Script-fu system, and Googling aimlessly for an existing png2gif conversion script, I finally managed to cobble one together.

To run the script, right-click anywhere on an image in the Gimp to get the context menu. Then, Filters -> Script-Fu -> Console. Paste this script in with the path to the directory of files you want to convert:


(let* ((filelist (cadr (file-glob "C:\\directory\\*.png" 1))))
  (while (not (null? filelist))
    (let* (
        (filename (car filelist))
        (image (car (gimp-file-load RUN-NONINTERACTIVE filename filename)))
        (drawable (car (gimp-image-get-active-layer image)))
        )
      (gimp-convert-indexed image 0 0 128 0 1 "")
      (gimp-file-save 1 image drawable (string-append filename ".gif") (string-append filename ".gif"))
    )
    (set! filelist (cdr filelist))
  )
)

Enjoy!

General Counsel's Last Lecture

2010-08-29T23:13:00.003-04:00

As the general counsel for our company left, he gave a great speech on what the common attributes of a star are. These notes are valuable to me, so they might be to you too.

Emotional intelligence

You need other people to help you

Ability to know others' needs and fears

What are people thinking about and feeling and where are they coming from

Imposter complex - everyone is afraid of being exposed in a group

You constantly have to communicate to people that they are safe

Confession of weakness

Judgment

Moving an answer around in time and space. How would this decision look in a year? In front of Congress?

Figuring out what things mean

Gained by screwing up and remembering the effects of your mistakes

You must step away from what you do to maintain perspective. Judgmnt requires perspective.

Sleep a lot. It helps your brain interconnect everything you learned.

Keep up hobbies, family activities.

Effective Communication

All knowledge is wasted that is not communicated to someone else.

People need to breathe

make your messages easily digestible

You need someone who loves you to give you honest feedback in order to improve your public speaking skills.

Presentations are not the time to be cool; it's distracting

Don't let your equipment and materials distract from you: you are the show

Dare to Be Dumb

Ask the "dumb" questions when no one else will.

People appreciate it that they didn't have to reveal their own ignorance and need the knowledge

Building Reputation

It's built all the time with every encounter with every person you meet

There's no time off

There's no difference between the person who empties the trash and the CEO

How To Obfuscate Something

2010-08-03T22:24:00.002-04:00

Uncyclopedia, on the topic of Obfuscation offers this wisdom:

The art of obfuscation has only one requirement, that is for the obfuscator to be a bit of a [jerk].... The following will be a step by step guide to obfuscation.

Let's begin with a simple sentence: "Gramma stole my axe."

Next we must identify our object, axe, our verb, stole, and our intellect pronoun, Gramma.

Now we will identify the intention of the sentence. In this case, the intention is to frame Gramma for a murder we have recently committed by placing the key evidence in her possession.

We are now ready to obfuscate.

Take a break, have some casserole.

First we will obfuscate the first word, Gramma, the woman who is of a most considerable age, but in good health nontheless, but who has had trouble in situations that involve (or in some very rare cases involving time and space, don't) one or more variables, and who has had a persistent outward dislike of the newspaper delivery boy, stole my axe."

Repeat this process for each newly introduced subject in the sentence until you run out of paper to write it on.

Visit Gramma in prison to gloat about your superior intellect.

Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker

2010-07-08T20:29:00.001-04:00

Whene’re I take my pipe and stuff it
And smoke to pass the time away,
My thoughts as I sit there and puff it,
Dwell on a picture sad and grey:
It teaches me that very like
Am I myself unto my pipe.
Like me, this pipe so fragrant burning
Is made of naught but earth and clay;
To earth I too shall be returning.
It falls and, ere I’d think to say,
It breaks in two before my eyes;
In store for me a like fate lies.
No stain the pipe’s hue yet doth darken;
It remains white. Thus do I know
That when to death’s call I must harken
My body too, all pale will grow
To black beneath the sod ’twill turn.
Or when the pipe is fairly glowing,
Behold then, instantaniously,
The smoke off into thin air going,
Till naught but ash is left to see.
Man’s frame likewise away will burn
And unto dust his body turn.
How oft it happens when one’s smoking:
The stopper’s missing from the shelf,
And one goes with one’s finger poking
Into the bowl and burns oneself.
If in the pipe such pain doth dwell,
How hot must be the pains of Hell.
Thus o’er my pipe, in contemplation
Of such things, I can constantly
Indulge in fruitful meditation
And so, puffing contentedly,
On land, on sea, at home, abroad,
I smoke my pipe and worship God.

Johann Sebastian Bach

How to Lie with Statistics

2010-07-03T20:02:00.002-04:00

Just finished reading "How to Lie with Statistics," by Mark Twain. The last chapter was really useful as far as tips in identifying whether reported statistics were fudged. The final story was a quote from Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi on the "nonsense side of extrapolation":

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

New Year's resolutions

2010-01-10T10:19:00.002-05:00

It's a new year and with it come good intentions. This year, I'm using a nutrition-tracking program called DietPower. A former coworker recommended it to me as a great tool to help you track not only the calories and fat that you eat, but also all the other nutrients required for a healthy diet. It even tracks the exercise you do.

The software allows you to set a weight goal for a certain date, tells you whether it is a reasonable goal or not, then promises you that if you eat only the number of calories per day it proscribes, you will reach your weight goal.

It's a great program.

DietPower has an extensive food library to help you enter what you ate during the day, and can list the foods in order of the best thing you could eat to meet your nutritional requirements for the day. THIS IS ONLY A TOOL. If you take its advice rather than your tastebuds', your diet will look something like this:

1. 1 vitamin pill, with minerals and beta carotene
2. 1 quart 2% milk, with added nonfat milk solids and Vitamin A
3. 1 cup raw, crude, corn bran
4. 1 cup dehydrated potato flakes with milk
5. 1 ounce cream of asparagus soup mix
6. 2 ounces of frosting
7. 1 fl ounce of grain alcohol
8. 1 tbsp apple butter
9. 1 fl ounce of Applejack (distilled, hard cider)
10. 8 pickled crab apples

Mmmm mmm good!

Wow

2009-03-14T13:54:00.000-04:00

I haven't updated this in a long time. There are so many options for photo hosting and social media, that this blog has fallen by the wayside. Most of my new adventures are documented on my Facebook account. That being said, I'll be good and update again. :)

March 14th is Pie Day! Celebrate by making one of these delicious pies.

Moving to Virginia

2007-09-12T23:03:00.001-04:00

Hey again.

A lot has happened since my last post, and I'm happy to report that I will begin working for Lockheed Martin in a little over a week! Monday, I drove to Manassas, VA to look at apartments. Tuesday, I found a beautiful apartment (and reasonably priced -- for the area) with a 15-minute commute to work. It's located near everything I could want or need: work, the University, shopping, it's right next to the commuter rail station to D.C., and only 15 minutes from Washington Dulles airport.

The complex is only 3 years old, and has lots of sound insulation. The grounds are gated and very well-maintained. There's a jogging path around the entire complex, and a fitness room with machines and free weights both! This is great, because now my resolution to get a gym membership is fulfilled without having to spend hundreds of dollars a year.

I'm really excited about finding this place and how quick my search was: I got to come back home to Georgia a day earlier than I expected. Crista and Dad will drive up with me and my stuff on Friday and return Sunday, then work starts two Mondays later on the twenty-fourth.

Send me an email for my new address! I'd love to have friends and family come visit me!

Family Reunion and Job Interview

2007-07-22T19:00:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since my last update, and a fair amount has happened since then. Mom, Dad, and I drove for two days up to Wappinger Falls, NY for the 2007 Stradling Family Reunion. (Mom's mom's side) This photo is of my generation of cousins with Uncle Jim and Aunt Ina. My sisters and older cousins weren't there for various reasons, so I got to be the oldest! The family reunion only lasted for a day, so it was another two day trip back down to Georgia, after a quick morning stop at Uncle Jim's.

Last week, I flew up to Philadelphia for a job interview with an engineering company. It was a lot of fun, even if it was only two days. I felt like the interview went well, so maybe I'll get to have a great job soon! And yes, the Cheese Steak was delicious!

Two hour layovers at each stop in the flight let me read 2 1/2 books too, so it was really grand! Book buying has become a minor obsession of mine now. Our local library (click here to take a virtual tour!) just isn't enough sometimes, so I've been taking to hanging around the Book Tavern downtown. The owner really knows his books and is always fun to talk with.

Anyway, the company I interviewed with was generous in its rental car and hotel options. Take a look at the interior of the car! It was a 2007 Ford (Taurus?) with black leather seats and entirely too comfortable. It's almost a shame it wasn't cold enough to try out the heated seats!

Augusta Canal

2007-05-31T13:42:00.000-04:00

This week, my adopted Uncle David came to visit us. We got to be tourists in our own city again!

This time, we took a ride on the Augusta Canal, an 8 1/2 mile long canal running parallel to the Savannah River. Henry Cummings dreamed of an industrial revolution in Augusta similar to one in Lowell, MA (also resulting from a canal.) Augusta grew lots of cotton, sold it up north, and then bought back the products. People figured they should do it all in Augusta.

The downtown area has revived a lot in recent years, though there are still only 1 or 2 restaurants that look like they'd pass the health board's inspection. It was beautiful weather as we walked up and down Broad Street. James Brown's statue is at the corner of Broad and 9th: he was born in Augusta. Apparently, his estate is planning on creating a tour of his home similar to Elvis's Graceland in Nashville. They have a small exhibit in the Augusta History Museum featuring one of his outfits and a video from the 60's where he came back to stop race riots.

Come and visit me sometime in Augusta and we'll show you the town!

Done!

2007-05-17T18:32:00.000-04:00

Hey again,

I'm done!

May 9th I graduated with a B.S. in Software Engineering and a B.A. in Piano Performance! Now I need a job.

Another book case would be great too. The library continues its incredible deals, so I keep rescuing volumes from their clutches. In the meantime, I'm reading and cooking and resting a week.

More later!

-Matthew

Merry Christmas!

2006-12-25T00:54:00.000-05:00

Christmas greetings!

Mom has kept us busy since we got home from school. It seems like it's been one nonstop open house (at other people's houses.) :) Cindy had her big Christmas party, and yesterday, we went to a formal ball in Greenwood, SC in celebration of a friend's birthday. My sister Charlotte presented a portrait of the birthday girl which she had painted for an art project this semester.

The end of the semester was really busy too with all the Fine Arts programs, Christmas Lights concert, and preparations for Handel's Messiah and the obligatory Ron Hamilton cantata. This year's Christmas lights concert was really cold! The concert two years ago, people were sweltering!

When I arrived home, my boxes from Wyoming were waiting for me in the foyer. I've been reunioning with my lost books and CDs for the past couple days now. This summer I bought about 30 books at different book stores in Logan, UT. My uncle and aunt have a home both in Wyoming and Georgia, so they offered to bring my boxes with them when they traveled back East after Thanksgiving. Now I can enter them into my LibraryThing account!

Sadly, this semester I was only able to finish 5 extra-curricular books with all of the heavy course work. I've talked with a couple friends about getting together to informally discuss a book a month, effectively limiting our collective extra reading to three books in a semester, and giving us an excuse to get together. Here are some more fine arts photos from some of the gang:

Charlotte and I attended a number of Fine Arts series together. Sadly, she couldn't join Dad and me for the cantata since she's in Symphonic Choir.

The Senior rooftop banquet had to be rescheduled twice due to bad weather! The dinner was different than I expected, but it was nice to spend time with old friends and see the Crowne Centre from an unusual angle. I've wanted to step out onto that roof ever since I started taking piano lessons on the 6th floor 5 years ago. :)

Just one more semester! I'm taking the GRE January 2nd and am studying most intently on the two writing sections. I've looked in every bookstore in Augusta for a Computer Science subject test prep book with no success. It would be nice to get that out of the way before interterm classes begin, since I already have a couple different things I'm working on right now.

There's a backlog of photos from this semester that I'll try to post gradually during the break as they become somewhat topical. In the meantime, About.com has a list of Night Before Christmas parodies that are sure to bring some cheer.

Back Home with my Organ Shoes

2006-12-20T23:39:00.000-05:00

Hey guys!

This semester was great! Even though it was the toughest one yet, I felt the most confident during finals than I ever have. Organ was, of course, wonderful. Next semester I plan to take the second semester of private, half hour lessons. Tomorrow, in the midst of Christmas shopping, I plan to stop at the church and practice for a little while, and then dicker around with one of the old pianos. Piano Tuning and Repair class gave a lot of useful information that I think will help me get some of the old pianos in the fellowship hall and nursery sounding better.

Someone left a comment asking what organ shoes are. Organ shoes are like dress shoes. They are made of a thin leather and are designed to fit on top of the B and C pedals in the big space between the black keys. My normal dress shoes are way too wide for that. This spot in the pedalboard gives the organist a "handy" reference that he can use to find any note on the pedalboard by touch. (When you're in the middle of a piece, the last thing you want to have to do is look down at your feet!) My organ shoes also have a soft felt bottom. I think this is both to achieve a good level of traction and also to avoid scuffing the pedals.

It's really hard to walk around in these shoes! The girls taking organ say that high heels are worse and I don't know what I'm talking about. In any case, you wouldn't want to wear your organ shoes around too much away from the organ because they'd get dirty and damaged very quickly.

The Coffee is Good

2006-09-16T17:51:00.000-04:00

Hey gang,

Since my sister gifted me with her old laptop, and since I now have an awesome roommate with a jeep, I can update my blog at local coffee shops! (Don't tell my French press.)

This semester, I get to take Private Organ! I've only had one lesson so far, but it's really great. Today I spent almost two hours in the practice room, played half a dozen hymns (including the one I was actually assigned,) and twenty-one pieces from the Organ Manual. All I really need to do right now is order my organ shoes... then my life will be complete! :)

Although I have the ability to get off campus now and update the blog, I probably won't have much time after the first couple of weeks here. I'm preparing for my recital next semester, and have Software Engineering Project, where we'll probably be putting in about 12 hours a week. Learning ASP and C# is worth it though!

See ya!

Packing for PCC

2006-08-30T14:31:00.000-04:00

Hey gang,

It's that time again! The summer's been long and fun, so it's time to counterbalance it with three more months of grueling labor, stress, and (were I not so manly) tears. Yes, the packing has begun! Felix the Cat's magic bag would come in very handy right about now with both my and my little sister's stuff to pack. Procrastinating until now was a sort of bad idea since our family seems to have tons of plans for every night left until we leave, although this means we've gotten to eat out at a couple favorite restaurants recently and try out a few more. There's a new mediterranean/middle eastern place called Khalid's Cafe just outside our neighbor that seems rather good.

In sort of related news, Charlotte's best friend Kirstin just left for St. Olaf's in Minnesota. Thank goodness for cellphones and email, or Kirstin may have dragged Charlotte along in the van! ;) Speaking of Charlotte, I still haven't convinced her to start packing. We've been going to Borders semi-frequently since I've returned from Utah and she's spent every moment there memorizing art books on comics and caricatures. Now, she's scanning in her art and cleaning it up in a photo editor. She's been mumbling about making a web comic or something like that, though it will probably have to wait until the Christmas break, since we sadly have very filtered Internet access at school.

Augusta State University hosted India Day a few days ago. It was a blast! Many of the grad students Crista knows participated in the program, and evidently spent the entire year since the last India Day preparing some wonderful entertainment, including traditional songs, dance, and instruments. The food was incredible as well, prompting my mother's rekindled interest in getting Mrs. Pumachcharige to teach her how to prepare more Sri Lankan dishes.

Google's photo management software Picasa is awesome! I've been staying up late into the night tagging all of my photos with everyone's names so I can instantly bring up all of the photos in my collection of a certain person or event. It's a great way to find wallpaper too. All I have to do is add a wall-worthy picture to my "Groovy Wallpapers," for easy retrieval the next time my desktop begins to look dull. (Usually about once a day.) Then, I copied Mom's 3.5 Gigabytes of photos, culled 2 GB out, and have yet to finish labeling them. It'll probably span into the new semester! 8)

Time to go pack!

Hiking with the Duprés

2006-08-02T16:08:00.000-04:00

This weekend was great! I got to spend it with my friends, the Duprés. Our families met about 12 years ago when we both went to Grace Baptist Church in Laurel, MD. Then, about 10 years ago, we both moved to the Augusta, GA area. It's been 6 years since I last got to see them, and since then their kids have grown a lot! We had an impromptu birthday party for me, went hiking in the mountains overlooking their house, and got to go to a lot of church dinners. :)

Their youngest, Nathan, and I have a lot in common, including a coffee addiction. I was shocked when I looked up Saturday morning to see him holding a mug. Naturally, he says he only likes it with cream and sugar. Yeah, drinking it black is usually my last resort too.

Also this weekend, I drove a little south and east of Salt Lake City to Park City, UT where they have a good concert series. The Salt Lake Symphony and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir gave a two hour joint concert including Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, selections from Rachmaninoff's Vespers (which I have at home, by Robert Shaw,) and a great Ralph Vaughn Williams sacred selection.

It was quite nice. Yesterday, I picked up a CD of Christmas music by the Mormon Tabernacle at Deseret Industries (the Mormon welfare equivalent of Good Will) for $3! Even better than that, though: I picked up Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, which is often considered his best work. It's performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, and is on a Philips LP. Also in the box were some Beethoven pieces directed by George Szell and solo violin by Nathan Milstein, one of my favorite violinists -- his CD of Bach's Sonatas for Unaccompanied Violin are excellent -- and another album of Vivaldi concerti. Not a bad find for 25 cents total!

During the week, a friend and I went to see Man of La Mancha in the Ellen Eccles theater here in downtown Logan. The area has that theater, the Lyric Opera, and an old movie theater that shows classic films all on one block. (The alley in the picture leads to the back of the Lyric Opera.) The soundtrack is pretty good! You can hear some snippets on Amazon's sountrack page. It's a play about Miguel de Cervantes, and his classic story, Don Quixote. The performance was okay, and it was fun to spend time with my friend and one of my roommates.

The internship is almost over. We're in the middle of compiling all our results, making pretty graphs, and writing our papers which we're hoping will get accepted at good conferences. Got to go and finish graphing!

New Camera

2006-07-26T10:48:00.000-04:00

Hey Gang!

My new camera arrived yesterday! I've been making up for lost time... 6 megapixels is much better than my older camera, and I think I can even use this one as a webcam. Also, it has a microphone, so I don't have to gesture wildly and make exagerated facial expressions to get my point across in videos I take.

The internship is almost over. Officially, it ends on the 9th, though we were told by our RA that we need to be out of the dorms on the 4th. :( After the internship, my plan is to drive to Wyoming and hang out with my uncle and aunt for a few days. They've lent me one of their vehicles for the summer, and I've already put over 1200 miles on it. By the time the summer is over, I figure I'll have driven over 2200 miles. It's got some problems with the starter, so I have to be careful how many stops I make, but it's been awesome being able to range around Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah!

Anyway, back to my uncle's house: Hopefully, I'll finish the electrical work in his addition, adding a new circuit for the master bedroom, and a couple more receptacles on an existing circuit that covers the sewing/computer room. It's going to be a really wired house! Before we put up the tongue and groove paneling on the walls and ceilings, we ran ethernet cable to almost every room in the house. They all terminate in a little closet upstairs, so I'm going to get him an 8-port switch and a wireless router at Walmart. They're really out in the middle of nowhere -- their property is entirely enclosed in National Forest -- so they're getting a high-speed satellite connection to the Internet to go with their television plan. Pretty cool!

After that, my uncle will drop me off in Salt Lake on the 12th, and I'll fly back to Atlanta, where -- hopefully -- Crista and Charlotte will break off from their wild aquarium, library, and Chinese grocery extravaganza long enough to pick me up and head home. ;) Sadly, I'm getting in too late to join them in their fun, but perhaps we'll get to do something in the 2 1/2 weeks before Charlotte and I go back to school.

Take it easy!

Having Fun in Utah

2006-07-17T21:41:00.000-04:00

Hey Gang!

Sorry for the long radio silence! My internship has kept me pretty busy during the day, and most of the rest of my time is spent exploring Logan and visiting people. :) This past week, however, I got to go rafting down the Snake River with my intern program. We had a great time and got to go into Jackson later that evening for pizza. It's really nice there!

Any way, on our second drift down the river, one of the rapids catapulted me out of the raft and I went through two of the rapids by myself. It was really exciting, and I'll never resent having to put on a life jacket again!

This weekend Logan had its annual sidewalk sale, where all the businesses down main street put booths out in front of their shops and discount stuff to passerby. Gary and I went just before the "official" weekend, since I planned to visit my family in Wyoming again. There were some decent deals, but nothing really useful looking. Even the bookstores didn't have enough out there to get me! (In contrast, I bought 18 books at the Pinedale Library book sale this weekend.) However, I did discover that there's a used book store on main that I haven't gone to yet. Tomorrow or Wednesday, I'm planning to check it out after a haircut.

I'm hoping to distribute photos tomorrow morning to folks who went on the trip. I invited the intern guys over for breakfast tomorrow morning. The grocery store was having an awesome sale on melons, and I can't eat them all myself! :D

Keep cool!

Library folk mocha

2006-06-15T01:21:00.000-04:00

Today was the first day in our internship that we didn't have class, so I took the opportunity to do a little more exploring on campus. The Science and Technology library is really fantastic. Their music section is larger and has more variety than our normal library in Pensacola. The architecture of the building is really nice too with lots of open spaces and natural lighting filtering through everywhere. After reading the latest IEEE journals they had on my topic, I checked out a book called Piano: Guided Sight-Reading, by Leonhard Deutsch. He was apparently from Vienna and a contemporary of Schoenberg. It was quite enjoyable and I picked up a number of useful tips -- and pieces -- to start using in my regular practice time. Gotta find it on eBay...

In other news, the Logan Yellow Pages lists a whole bunch of used book stores and two coffee shops, so the next few weeks should be interesting. There's also a couple delis and cheese factories that sound like they may have something cool in them. Coffee has again become part of my life now that I've bought a coffee grinder. All of these sales and low prices are going to catch up to me when it's time to ship everything back home.

Went to a local folk music concert tonight. The theatre is housed in the same fine arts complex that I've been practicing in. The concert is part of a series that's going on this week, but I think I'll save my money for some operas produced by the Utah Festival Opera happening later in July in the Eccles theater on Main Street.

Internship in Utah

2006-06-03T23:26:00.000-04:00

Hey gang!

I'm back! Now that I have Internet access in my dorm, I can continue updating my journal and uploading photos so you can all see what I'm up to this summer. :)

This summer, I get to work in the Computer Science department of Utah State University in Logan. For the first three weeks or so, we'll have classes on graphics programming and neural networks to help prepare us for our actual research in the rest of the summer. Things are really intense already!

We've only had two class days so far, and Dr. Qi has already brought us up from (in my case) knowing nothing about graphics programming to writing my own mean filters in Matlab. Even though implementing my own image blurring/sharpening/enhancement algorithms is fun, I will use Matlab's or a professional graphic suite for performance's sake.

I got to sleep in late today and munch on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast. My walking trip to Walmart two days ago entailed carrying back anything I bought 2 1/2 miles on foot. Today, I discovered the bus. Logan's public transit system is wonderful! The buses are clean, on time, and go everywhere in the city. On top of that, the buses are driven by knowledgable, native English speakers who are not only helpful, but very friendly. I've uploaded some pictures I took from my room. The mountains are right outside my window. There's still snow on the tops of some of them.

I have a room to myself, and have two suitemates. One is in the REU program. I've gotten to know the 3 other non-USU students fairly well so far, and they all seem like great guys. There are 8 of us total.

Time to go to sleep! I'm going to try to get up tomorrow in time for Sunday School at a church I found in the Yellow Pages and located through Google Maps. Sadly, public transit doesn't run on Sundays.

...Back to exploring Logan on foot!

In Massachusetts

2006-01-02T22:03:00.000-05:00

Hey gang,

It's been busy, but all of us except Dad and Grandma are at my other Grandpa's house in Massachusetts. It looks like we'll have some R&R for the next couple of days before PCC's interterm classes start again, so I've taken the opportunity to read some of the Gordon R. Dickson books my sisters gave me for Christmas; try out a couple social network services like del.icio.us for internet bookmarks, 43things for making list of goals and meeting people who share them, and Myspace for ... I guess meeting new people; and finish submitting a paper about research from last summer for review.

Additionally, I discovered that Mozilla's free calendar software called Sunbird can load other calendars off the Internet. This means that you can share your calendar online with people, or you can use one of the thousands of neat event, news, lunar cycle, and holiday calendars available at ICalShare's website.

All in all, this has been a very satisfying vacation. :)

Christmas!

2005-12-25T01:25:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Phew! I just finished wrapping all the presents! It seems like I left everything until the last minute this year -- my Christmas shopping finally concluded the 23rd. Trying to sneak the gifts under the tree was impossible since Aunt Merris came by earlier today and dropped off a truckload of presents. This year everyone gave so much! Tomorrow, our morning services are an hour later than normal, so Dad, Mom, and I are leaving for the Lord's Supper around 9:15. Uncle David, Aunt Merris, Grandma, and the girls are coming for Family Bible Hour, which starts at 11:00, I think. After that, we'll have our Christmas dinner and open presents.

Normally, presents are the first thing we do -- along with eating Mom's traditional Christmas stollen -- although we're still not sure if Charlotte will stand for dinner before presents. ^_^

I should be getting to bed soon, but before I go, I've got to tell you about an awesome site I just found! A friend and I are starting an ensemble for our collegian back at college and have been looking for music to use in the upcoming barbershop competition this Spring semester. After a little surfing, I found the Barbershop Harmony Society, which has tons of free sheet music online and tips on how to improve your group. It also has a search for groups in your area if you're interested in singing with some other guys. There's one in Pensacola that's having a concert at the church right across the street from PCC, and there's even one here in Augusta headed by *surprise!* a guy who lives in our neighborhood!

If only I spent more time here at home! I'll have to tell Keith -- he joined the Augusta Choral Society and sang in their performance of the Messiah at Sacred Heart Cultural Center a week or so ago.

Well, time for bed to dream about chestnuts and their recovery in America from chestnut blight... and such. Oh yeah! With all the presents and candy, don't forget what Christmas is really all about!

Merry Christmas again!

Back in the swing

2005-12-22T01:24:00.000-05:00

Hey gang!

I'm back from college for Christmas break now and have had some time to recover! I just got back from a hunting trip with my Uncle out to Eatonton, GA where some relatives of ours live. Sadly, we didn't see any deer, but I did see four bobcats. They were beautiful! Two of them were kittens and kept pouncing on each other instead of the rabbit that darted away from the bunch. We also came away with two big bags of pecans we picked up off their lawn. Just walking across their yard, we crunched about a bucket's worth.

With the heavy social calendar my family has, it looks the break will be a bit shorter than I had hoped. ;) Christmas evening, we're probably getting together with some friends to go and see the Chronicles of Narnia. On the 27th, we're going to an after-Christmas Christmas music party. I need to prepare a few pieces to play for that, and I should probably start working on my concerto for next semester -- it turns out that the contest is in the Spring semester this year rather than the Fall one. January 1st, Crista and I will fly to Massachusetts to visit with Grandpa and join up with my Mom and Charlotte (who are leaving December 28th.)

Now for school stuff!

This semester was my busiest ever! (With next semester looking like more of the same.) Still, I did have a little time to eat with friends now and then... and, oh yeah... take pictures! Click here to see my most recent photos, or here to see just photos from PCC.

PCC is building an extension to the Sports Center. The sign above the model reads:


Ground Floor
- 2 big boulders, 12 feet tall
- Tall climbing walls
- Water park with 2 water slides
- A surfing wave
- 8 new racquetball courts

Mezzanine Level
- Roller Skating Track
- Cardio Machines
- Weight Lifting

Upper Deck
- Sun bathing

Construction Begins: October 2005
Anticipated Completion: Spring 2007

Check back for more as I update during the Christmas break!

Craziness!

2005-11-04T22:43:00.000-05:00

Hey gang!

Sorry for the long radio silence, but school's been insane! This semester, I'm taking 19 credits again, but this semester's 19 and last semester's 19 are totally different beasts. A lot of 1 and 2-credit music courses this semester involve extensive practice outside of class. I'm accompanying 5 people this semester so far, and at the rate of pianists leaving, who know how many more will call. *rubs temples* Must... learn how to say... "NO!"

Our midterm grade report just appeared in our boxes yesterday! It wasn't nearly as bad as I was anticipating, but there is definitely much room for improvement in piano-related stuff.

Music History has been a real blast so far! I've gotten to write a paper on Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Dmitri Shostakovich, and I have another paper due on November 13. Mr. Roberts is having us read a biography on a well-known composer and finding 10 significant events, aspects, or situations in his or her life, and write about how that influences us personally or musically.

Software Engineering and Assembler Programming (for the x86) have also been interesting and have lots of interesting programming and design projects. Speaking of which, I still need to reinstall Windows on one of my extra hard drives so I can work on the projects in my room. I tried installing Microsoft Visio, one of the flowcharting tools we use in Software Engineering, and it somehow corrupted Windows beyond redemption. I think the hard drive it's using is at fault, since all of the other hardware is used when I use my Linux harddrive.

Speaking of Linux, I found a neat-looking Linux distribution called SymphonyOS. (http://www.symphonyos.com) I'm still downloading the CD image,
but it looks like the most user-friendly and ... pretty version of Linux out there. I'll give it a try in a spare moment sometime and tell ya'll about it. :)

Ok, enough about computers! My BMG Music order just came in and I've been running my new Christmas CDs almost constantly. How the Grinch Stole Christmas, A Prairie Home Companion Christmas (which has a few too many Norwegian-language carols for my taste), and Messiah: The Dream Cast were the Christmas ones, with Hillary Hahn's "Lark Ascending," by Ralph Vaughn Williams thrown in for good measure. Mix these with spiced apple air freshener and York peppermint patties and it's holiday time! ;)

Priester's Pecans (http://www.priesters.com/) is also a great place to pick up a bit of the Christmas spirit. We pass by it everytime we drive home for Christmas through Alabama. Try their cider mulling spices if you get the chance! I didn't see it on their site, but if you're in the area, stop by and pick up a few packages.

My roommates, some friends, and I went to the Chamber Concert tonight and it was great! Among the many pieces they played were Beethoven's Piano Trio op. 1 #3 and Fuga from String Quartet Razoumavsky #3, Schubert's Quartet op. 125 #1, and Telemann's Duet from Gulliver Suite.

Guess that's all for now. Have a great week!

Atlanta again

2005-09-02T00:04:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow I'm driving to Atlanta again to pick up James from the airport. I'm starting to feel really comfortable hopping around all those interstates now! This is a photo I took of my older sister Crista at Atlanta's Chinatown. (It's just a shopping center, not a big fancy district. Imagine my disappointment.)

Tonight I made a last great effort to pack. Charlotte is repacking all of her boxes and suitcases to get rid of unessentials. With all the people that are riding down with us, we will just have to take two cars. With gas prices over $3 right now, it's going to be really expensive, but there's no avoiding it. Guess we'll have to start charging for taxi service. ;)

When math just doesn't make sense

2005-08-30T01:44:00.000-04:00

I was browsing through my system logs when suddenly, boredom washed over me like a waxer on the McKenzie building's marble floors. Naturally, I fired up fortune and played with it for half an hour. After finding a funny WC Fields quote or two to add to my signature file, this popped up:


(1) X=Y                         ; Given
(2) X^2=XY                      ; Multiply both sides by X
(3) X^2-Y^2=XY-Y^2              ; Subtract Y^2 from both sides
(4) (X+Y)(X-Y)=Y(X-Y)           ; Factor
(5) X+Y=Y                       ; Cancel out (X-Y) term
(6) 2Y=Y                        ; Substitute X for Y, by equation 1
(7) 2=1                         ; Divide both sides by Y
                -- "Omni", proof that 2 equals 1

What a wonderful puzzle! I have seen a couple proofs like this before, but had never been able to sort it out to my satisfaction. Work on it for a while yourself, then read the last paragraph of my blog for today for the solution.

This week is devoted to packing everything into tiny boxes in preparation for our drive down to college on Monday the 5th. Charlotte's done fairly well in sorting and cleaning her belongings. I, on the other hand, still have piles of books, polo shirts, and unidentifiable Korean candies scattered around my room in a roughly horseshoe-shaped gauntlet. I've talked myself out of bringing any novels to read. This pains me greatly, since I just received many new ones for my birthday three weeks ago and haven't yet had the opportunity to pore over them. The necessity of having enough room in the van and the realization that I won't have any time to read them at school anyway have sadly impressed themselves into my mental packing list even as a parent might unknowingly impress his shoe into your stealthy playdoh earthworms while taking a basket of laundry upstairs to sort. *sigh*

Whether we'll actually be able to fit into the van is becoming more and more of a concern. I'm trying to cut back the things I'm bringing. Now that I have my slim LCD monitor, I won't be needing my computer desk -- I'll just set up shop on the desk in the room. If my roommates also have desktops, I'll move it onto my bed somehow. Charlotte's friend Sarah Grace is coming with us, though I don't anticipate her bringing as much as Charlotte is. Charlotte has a HUUUUUUGE pile of ... stuff in HALF of the foyer. She says that's not everything either. We're also bringing something down for a friend who stayed at PCC for the summer.

Speaking of PCC, they made the following announcement today about hurricane Katrina. I'd link to it, but our school's website is an amorphous blob of jelly that for some reason has unpredictably non-persistent content.

Monday, August 29, 8:30 a.m.
Hurricane Katrina is currently making landfall in the southeast Louisiana/Mississippi area. Pensacola is far out on the edge of the storm and is experiencing only tropical storm winds. At the present time, local channel 3 television is reporting winds in our area of 20-30 miles per hour, which is not unusual in stormy weather. Channel 3 also reports that the weather we are presently experiencing is the worst that we will have, though they anticipate it will continue for several hours. At the college campus, we have had one-half inch of rain since midnight. We are expecting gusty winds until later in the day, and students will remain in their shelter areas until the winds calm significantly.

Hopefully, I'll get to talk to some of my friends who are still down there tomorrow sometime. Another friend is supposed to fly to Pensacola on Friday via New Orleans, so I suppose he'll have to have a flight or two rerouted.

In a little over three hours, Dad and I will go to the Sunrise Grill for our Tuesday morning Bible Study with some of the other men from Bethany Chapel. We've been reading through C. H. Mackintosh's Short Papers, and today's article is The Law and the Gospel. The passage under study is the familiar story of the Good Samaritan, found in Luke 10:25-35. Mackintosh applies the story in a rather novel way. He points out that Jesus tells the lawyer who approached him that the end of the law is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and your neighbor also. Mackintosh reiterates the point found in scripture that the law was given to condemn man in his own righteous, and that it is the grace and love of Christ alone that can save us from sin and death. Here are a few choice quotations:

The law makes no provision for imperfect obedience, however sincere. It makes no allowance for infirmity. Its one brief, pointed inquiry is, “Have you continued in all things?” If you say No (and who can say otherwise?) it can only curse you. Why? Because it is perfect. Were it to pass over a single transgression, it would not be a perfect law. Its very perfection insures the condemnation of the transgressor. “As many as are of works of law (that is, as many as work on the principle, stand on the ground, occupy the platform of works of law) are under the curse,” and cannot possibly be anything else. This establishes the point unanswerably. The law can only prove to be a ministration of death and condemnation to the sinner, simply because he is a sinner and “the law is holy, and just, and good.” It is no use for a man to say, “I am not looking to the law for life or justification, but merely as a rule and for sanctification.” As a rule for what? For the sanctification of what? If you say, “for my old nature,” the answer is, so far from being “a rule of life,” it is “a ministration of death;” and so far from sanctifying the flesh, it condemns it, root and branch. If, on the other hand, you say it is for the new nature, then is your mistake equally obvious, since the apostle expressly declares that “the law is not made for a righteous man” (1 Tim. 1: 9).

...

The law and the sinner are complete opposites — wholly irreconcilable. I must get a new nature, stand upon new ground, be in the new creation, before I can delight in the law of God. “I delight in the law of God after the inward man” (Rom. 7: 22). But how do I get this “inward man,” this new nature? How do I get into the new creation? Not by works of law of any shape or description, but by faith of Jesus Christ. I become united to Christ in the power of a new and endless life, upon which the law has no claim. I died in Christ. Hence the law has no further demand on me. If a man is in prison for murder and dies there, the law is done with him, inasmuch as the life in which the crime was committed is gone. Thus it is with the sinner who believes in Jesus. God sees him to be dead. His old man is crucified. The sentence of the law has been put into execution upon him in the Person of Christ. Had it been executed upon himself, it would have been death eternal, but having been executed upon Christ, His death is of infinite, divine and eternal effectiveness. Moreover, having the power of eternal life in Himself, He rose, as a Conqueror from the tomb after having met every claim. And wonderful to declare, the believer, having died in Him, now lives in Him forever. Christ is his life; Christ is his righteousness; Christ is his rule of life; Christ is his model; Christ is his hope; Christ is his all and in all (Rom. 6, 7; Gal. 2: 20-21; Gal. 3, Gal. 4; Eph. 2: 4-6; Col. 2: 10-15).

You can see the full article and all of Mackintosh's writings on this page. Just search for the title of the article.

Wow! You made it to the end of the post! The Math Forum @ Drexel has a page here on precisely this problematic proof. I admit that I didn't come up with anything better than the error occurred between the 4th and 5th steps. The problem -- and this is the problem with all such apparently impossible proofs -- is that we unwittingly divide by zero. I didn't accept the answer until I worked out the problem several more times myself. Now, I wonder how often I have made this mistake in my math courses. There were so many times when I'd work a problem through and get gibberish, that I wonder if some of that could have been prevented by simple preventative error checking. Perhaps this problem and its solution should be presented to all algebra students as soon as possible in order to avoid simple errors later in their mathematical studies!

Gone but not forgotten

2005-08-23T10:52:00.000-04:00

It's that time of year again! My prolonged absence from my blog has been filled with much hurrying and scurrying across Georgia. These last few weeks have been filled with PCC students scrambling to enjoy such carnal pleasures as wearing jeans to Walmart and brushing with orange toothpaste. ;) Seriously, I am very eagerly anticipating returning. There's so much exciting stuff I get to learn and who knows what the Lord will do in my life this semester!

Yes, I have already begun thinking about packing. I haven't exactly formulated my list yet, but I have a rough idea that I'll be needing socks and underwear this semester. Thanfully, I already have a plethora of socks -- mostly white.

Charlotte has 19 skirts! My little sister is coming this year to begin studying Commercial art, and I can't believe the sheer ... volume of stuff she wants to bring! I don't think there's gonna be room for all of us in the vehicle. One of her friends is coming down to PCC too and supposedly is riding with us.

I'm going to have to cut back to two carry-on bags or something, and ONE of them is GOING to be my computer!!! The other might have some khakis in it. Hmm.... of course, I suppose I could always pack my computer WITH khakis.

In "When Worlds Collide," they pack their spaceship that will take them to the new planet with books as insulation, providing both plentiful shock-absorbing material and plenty of reading material for a long life without such conveniences as, say, oh, Earth.

The hunter safety course that I picked up in Thompson is now finished! Yesterday, I took the test and printed out my score sheet, only to discover that our county was having the rest of the examination last night at 6:00. Sadly, it was too late to preregister, and we had plans to go to visit with some missionaries from Albania anyway.

They were really nice! The point was emphasized that a missionary should seek his support solely from the Lord and not go around to all the churches in the area to raise a large amount of money before going to the field. It's along the same lines as George Muller's trusting in the Lord alone for his needs, and doing quite well. God says that he will provide all our needs, and as I've been seeing more and more in my studies of C. H. Makintosh's Short Papers, the point that the center of God's will is where you're safest and freest has really been driven home.

A group of men from our assembly, including my Dad and myself, meet every Tuesday morning at the Sunrise Grill for a Bible study and have been discussing Makintosh's papers. It's been a great experience!

Charlotte and I are busily ripping our CD collections of music that passes at school so we won't have to cart along hundreds of CDs. There are still a few I need to bring in bodily form to share with other people though. Time to get back to packing and folding towels!

Crista is gone

2005-08-08T22:05:00.000-04:00

Today, Crista and I drove to Atlanta and visited China Town. Crista was flying out of Atlanta to go and visit Stormie for a week or so-long vaction. Watching movies with on-the-seen shoots at the China Town in LA, I naturally assumed it would be a mysterious place fraught with crime bosses, shipping docks, and creepy old guys with long wispy beards trying to sell you weird pets. Sadly, Atlanta's China Town is only a little shopping center with several (very tasty) restaurants, a courtyard garden with a koi pond, and a few shops.

This did not take up the three or so hours we had planned to squander investigating the shady corners of the Chinese underworld in downtown Atlanta before Crista needed to be at the airport, so we decided to just drive around and go wherever looked like fun. We found the Atlanta Farmers Market. It wasn't huge, and it really looked like a grocery store inside rather than having the expected inordinate truckloads of bok choy, but it was great fun nevertheless. We vowed before entering not to get a cart lest we buy something, but my resolve was broken in less than a minute after seeing a big bag of lychees for $1.99 a pound! Yay! We can't get these at home!

Lychees are a very sweet and fragrant subtropical fruit native to China. They were introduced to the United States sometime in the 1800s; my Dad remembers eating fresh lychees growing up in Florida. They're really cool fruits: they have reddish leathery skins on the outside, but the fruit inside is a pale translucent blah with the consistency of something like a muscadine. They have hard and shiny seeds inside them, being of the same sort of fruit as a peach.

I'm going to try planting a few of the seeds and see whether they will sprout (and then survive) for me. I'd like to bring them with me to college, but they require full sunlight. :(

Crista and I finally broke away from the market with only a few additional purchases and I dropped her off at the airport. I got home around 5:30, so I think I spent about 5 hours on the road today... maybe a little more. Next week on Tuesday, I have been assigned the solemn honor of retrieving her from Atlanta. Perhaps next time we'll infiltrate Atlanta's Thai (food) underworld!

Weddings, Piano, and Paint

2005-08-07T00:05:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I last checked in! I arrived home safe and sound and have been working hard to relax. Yesterday, I drove to Newnan, GA for a friend's wedding. It was held at Dunaway Gardens in an outside, natural ampitheater. I drove home last night and got in about 1:00 this morning. Today, we finished priming all the bedrooms, the foyer, and the trim, so painting the rest of the house should be fairly straightforward once we get around to it. Mom said she didn't think we'd get around to it tomorrow, though. :(

Another friend, Daniel, supposedly got married in Texas today. His brother called my phone while we were painting, but nobody heard it ring, and by the time we noticed it was really late. (And then I forgot my phone at Crista's house when we left for home.) ^^;; Congratulations, Daniel and Amy!

Practicing the piano has been a nice break now. I'm working on the concertos for this coming semester, and really need to pick out some other pieces to get started working on. I've been working on a couple sacred pieces to play as preludes, because folks keep asking me to play for church. *guilt* Hopefully, I'll get to watch Mrs. Joyner play hymns to gain some more insight into hymnplaying. :)

Time to go again! My friend Joy has noticed that I only post on my blog from 12:00 - 1:00 am. It's the only time that's free! Really! ;)

Internship complete

2005-07-28T21:24:00.000-04:00

Today was the last day of my internship! We only had two presentations this afternoon -- and both guys did a really great job. :) After waiting about in an hour in the Swearingen building for the hail and torrential rains to stop, we walked across the railroad tracks to the California Dreaming for dinner. The building is really nice! It's mostly the original structure of the former Union Station that stood there X decades ago.

After a quick summary meeting with my project partner after dinner, I started the long task of packing all of this JUNK up and moving out. So far, all of my clothes save what I'm using tomorrow are packed away into my suitcase and garment bag. Thankfully, most of my library here fit in my suitcase too. :D

It would be really great if there were a food bank close by so I could drop off my perishables, but I suppose they'll last without refrigeration for an hour or so without too much of a problem.

My computer, of course, is the last thing that gets packed since it's both my stereo and link to scintillating discussions on the Teenpact alumni board. ;) Actually, I'm waiting for some emails from my faculty advisors who are in Italy and the Netherlands, respectively.

Mom is going over to Crista's house this weekend to help her finish painting. Dad and I are planning to hit the electronics stores to buy me a replacement monitor. My existing one's screen frequently fuzzes-out and does all sorts of cool, unexpected acrobatic tricks for me.

Borders keeps trying to siphon away my hard-earned summer savings with its 30%-off sales. Click here for the coupon! It works for Waldenbooks too, apparently. It's good for 30% off the regular price of one paperback. Last week, they had the same 30% sale on music and DVDs, so of course I picked up two CDs I've been looking at for a long time. With the discount, it was even cheaper than buying them online!

Sorry for the lack of images in my most recent posts. My image host suddenly flaked out, so I'm search for a new one. Any suggestions?

Have a wonderful, safe, cool, and productive weekend!

The end is near

2005-07-25T21:56:00.000-04:00

This weekend, Grandma and I got to spend some quality time together. Among other things, I took her to her hair salon and then to Walmart for some things for kitty. Grandma's bird feeder ran out of seed two weeks ago, but I couldn't find the seed bucket and everyone else was gone. This week, I found the bucket and refilled it after cleaning out the feeder. Grandma and kitty are so happy that the birds are back! Mom filled the hummingbird feeders too, so now the backyard is alive again with red wings of all kinds. :)

Steve and I went through our presentation twice today and it's getting better. We actually deliver it Wednesday afternoon, so there's still time to give it a few more run-throughs.

Since we didn't have a meeting this morning, I took care of some unfinished business with Garden Guides.com. I placed an order way back on June 16, and sent an email at the beginning of July asking what the status of the shipment was, but never got an answer. I called the number on their website, and was pleasantly surprised by a real, live person who was friendly and helpful. She said that probably the order was canceled because the order total was under their minimum without shipping factored in. I'm just glad the order is on its way -- I can't wait to see if dill and garlic chives will grow in a college dorm. ;D

I uploaded Mom's pictures from Nelson's wedding to my Flickr account. It turns out that Flickr will only let you see the last 200 photos you uploaded unless you pay $25 a year for their pro account, so I have no way of accessing all of my old PCC photos. }:( I'm glad Google doesn't play silly games like that with their services. Yahoo (owns Flickr) should take some notes.

After this internship ends Thursday, I need to find the local DNR office to get the hunter safety DVD to get my hunting license for this winter. Much sooner than that, I have a ton of stuff to pack into the Sable! I made the mistake of bringing things from home every week during the internship, so now I'm up to my nostrils in *stuff*.

Fading fast... good night.

MSN Virtual Earth

2005-07-25T10:03:00.000-04:00

Microsoft just made their online Virtual Earth available in order to compete with Google Maps. The interface is a lot slower than Google Maps, and while it tries to have a nice transparency effect with the menus hovering over the map, whenever I try to drag the map around it looks really choppy as the menus refresh more slowly than the rest of the map pane.

The satelitte photos seem to have more coverage than Google Maps. Here's PCC! Google Maps only has the Academy down the road in its maps. Unfortunately, Virtual Earth's maps aren't in color -- maybe they'll fix that later.

Try them out!

BOSE Factory Fieldtrip

2005-07-21T12:54:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, we took a tour through the BOSE factory near Columbia off I77. It was really neat to see all of the automated machinery that builds and tests the wave radios and CD players they make there. There is still a fair amount of human labor involved, but only for the tasks that a computer or robot can't do -- even stacking pallets is done by a giant machine they call "Big Bertha."

Our tour guides were very knowledgable; one of them was even mostly responsible for the automation of the factory! Even cooler, he was a USC grad and got to work with Dr. Bowles, one of our advisors, on a IEEE project.

To top it all off, we even got free pens!

Sadly, they wouldn't let me take my camera into the factory itself lest I steal company secrets and such, I suppose. The grounds are veery nice though, and you can see some pictures of them and the other REU students in my photo album.

Tomorrow, we're going to the South Carolina Police Department's Computer Forensics Lab mysteriously acronymed "SLED." Hopefully, they'll let me take some pictures there.

I've been really enjoying StumbleUpon, a free social bookmarking plugin for your web browser. Church Sign Generator is one of my most recent stumbles. I think I can count on one hand the number of sites it's recommended to me that I didn't enjoy. Try it out and add me as a friend!

Gotta go finish my paper and start working on Power Point slides for my presentation Wednesday -- stay cool!

Back from the wedding!

2005-07-18T22:42:00.000-04:00

Congratulations, Nelson and Sarah!

I got back from Pennsylvania yesterday afternoon. My flight up Friday was really great -- even with an hour wait to take off, it was a most relaxing trip. I finished Robert Heinlein's Red Planet, and enjoyed it thoroughly. The wedding itself was Saturday afternoon at a nice church in Harrisburg, PA, so Saturday morning, we had a leisurely start and enjoyed the company of a friend in Columbia, MD. It's really incredible to think that Nelson's married now. :) It doesn't seem like very long ago that we were both living in Laurel and homeschooling. :o

Steve and I got a lot of work done on our paper today, so there shouldn't be very much pressure for the Thursday deadline for our rough draft. A little bit more literature review on two topics, references in their proper formats, and some more revising of the text body itself should see us through quickly. Now, we just need to find an appropriate computer conference to submit the paper to for publication.

In the meantime, I'm trying to find the Georgia Department of Wildlife's phone number to ask for the Hunter's Education CD that's supposed to be available. Annoyingly, their website now requires you to register an account with your birthday and social security number. *grumble grumble* Looks like I'll just wait and ask Dad to drop by the office some time.

That's pretty much all that's happening right now, though do remember to check out my photos for exclusive shots of the wedding. :D

Leaving for Pennsylvania

2005-07-15T12:19:00.000-04:00

I'm leaving for my flight in 45 minutes. I've got an unread Robert Heinlein book Crista lent me, a new Mythadventures of Aahz and Skeeve book, and a commentary on Roman Catholic soteriological views. Additionally armed with my complete Beethoven symphonies CD set, I think I'm ready to hit the skies!

Hopefully, I should get into D.C. around 4pm and drive from there up to Pennsylvania for the wedding.

Have a great weekend! =)

Cold water

2005-07-14T10:37:00.000-04:00

Well, it looks like the cloudy weather is the result of another week-long spell of no hot water here in our environmentally friendly dormitory. It's not as cold as the water at PCC after the hurricane, thankfully, but it's still COLD! *shiver*

Our project is going pretty well. We finished the last analysis and are ready to start writing the paper today. I'm totally dissatisfied with the results, but our faculty advisor seems happy. (I'm hoping to secretly work on some more semantic processing algorithms by night and slipping them into the source code I'm cleaning up. ;D)

I've been spending late nights up doing geeky stuff again. Last night, I was making 3D paper desk calendars. Try it! It's fun!

Tomorrow afternoon I fly out of Columbia Metropolitan Airport to Washington and meet up with my family for my friend's wedding. :)

Grad school

2005-07-12T23:50:00.000-04:00

In this morning's session, we had a visitor from the Office of Fellowships & Scholars Programs. She had some really good information on applying for fellowships that have encouraged me to consider the possibility of taking a couple years off after graduation to get a Masters degree in Music before pursuing additional Computer Science degrees. The National Science Foundation (NSF), for example, provides funding for three years within a five-year period, allowing you to defer payment for two years while volunteering for Americorp, say. (That was the example she gave.)

I suppose I should focus now on simply graduating from undergrad. *sigh* At least I have some plans! Of course, all these plans could change depending on if I make one of those "lifelong friendships" PCC keeps advertising about. ;D

Deluge!

2005-07-10T20:39:00.000-04:00

This weekend sure was action-packed! Some relatives stopped by for the night Friday on their way home from visiting more family in the cold North (Carolina) and we had a nice dinner and visit. Yesterday around 2:00, an unbelievably strong dounpour started. While not as long-lasting, it was even stronger than the hurricane-induced showers we had back when we first moved to Georgia in 1996!

I was talking with a friend in Pensacola about the time the storms started here, and she said that it was just beginning to rain there as well. Hope everyone down there is ok now that the storm passed! Thank goodness it didn't linger as long as Ivan did.

Unfortunately, our house is at the bottom of a hill and the house started flooding in throught the front door. Thankfully, while I was desperately out in the rain trying to re-dig the channels that were supposed to divert water around the house and into the drainage ditch in the backyard, my good neighbor pitched in with his ... pitchfork. Together, we were able to divert most of the water away from the front door, and clear away debris from the fence. The debris prevented the water from freely flowing into the back, welling up to 3-4 feet in some places!

Even with all this, there was still a lot of flooding in the foyer. While shoving the water away with a (surprisingly effective) pushbroom, I came to the conclusion that I needed sandbags to reclaim my home from the sea. Frantically dashing around to the garage, I grabbed the closest thing to a sandbag we have -- the contents of the mending basket. These are textiles that, in the course of the Royal family's illustrious dynasty, have come to be excessively worn or to be in need of some minor repair. Many of my childhood clothes still live in that basket. Armed with loads of old towels and blankets (and a torn pair of jeans,) the rushing tide was stopped enough for me to bail with a 40-lb detergent bucket.

After the ordeal, I rewarded myself with sweet tea, tylenol, and a package of carrot cake. *urp*

There's still mud everywhere downstairs, though thankfully, we were able to stop the flooding before it hit the family room. Ah well, we were planning on replacing that carpet with tile anyway.

West Quad Photos

2005-07-08T14:52:00.000-04:00

Hey again!

This morning, we went on a tour of our dorm. We thought it was an odd idea since we've been living here for several weeks, but I guess none of us had really explored around it that much before because we saw some really neat things!

The dorm is a "green dorm," meaning that it's supposed to be made out of things that are good for the environment such as energy efficient lights, wood from sustainable forests, and faucets that don't put out hardly any water at all. They say that our bathroom sink faucets run at the rate of half a gallon per minute. I believe it. It takes three times as long to wash soap off my hands with that sink than any other sink I've ever used. They say that the toilets flush 1.6 gallons per flush.

The toilets actually work fairly well, but given that the average flush time is 5 seconds according to my extensive tests, the three calls to maintenance and 24 hour waiting period for them to come and fix my perpetually flushing toilet, more than 27,648 gallons were wasted thanks to bureaucratic inefficiency... but I repeat myself.

I raise the issue because they claim they built this dormitory complex for less than the price of a non-"green" building of equivalent specifications. To put these savings in perspective, the three dorms cost the South Carolina taxpayer $30.9 million dollars. I have great difficulty believing that a dormitory complex which houses a mere 500 students couldn't have been constructed for less than $61,800 per resident. Additionally, the tour guide assured us that $80,000 a year is saved in utilities, meaning that these savings alone will pay for the dorm itself in a mere 386 years. When I asked him how a "green dorm," which requires exotic materials and expensive equipment, could come in under the budget for a "normal dorm," he replied that it was because they made all of the contractors (architect, electrician, plumper, etc.) sit down and come up with an "integrated design." Why couldn't there be even greater savings for regular buildings, then, following that same process? In any case, it seems they could save even more money by making their administrative processes more efficient. All of USC's new buildings will be "green buildings" now since they are obviously cheaper than traditional structures.

On a happier note -- and the title of this post -- I have more photos from my REU program! My library book on transformational grammar was due, so I took my camera for a little walk. My dorm, West Quad, is really quite comfortable and attractive. Make sure you check out photos of the dorm and also random photos of our REU cookout at the Eastmans' house.

Even though the week was much abbreviated by Independence Day, Steve and I were able to get a LOT of work done. We just have to run our system through some tests and perform some (very in-depth) statistical tests in order to write the "Results" section of our paper. Naturally, there are a million improvements I'd still like to make to the system, but I'm not sure that we can implement them all in the two weeks we have before presentations are due. I've got to learn how to make better Powerpoint slides too...

Time for me to head back to Augusta for the weekend. Stay cool, and remember to pray for the people hurricane Denis (now Category 4) is going to visit. It's projected path is the same as Ivans', so PCC looks like it's going to get it hard again.

Happy Independence Day!

2005-07-04T23:14:00.000-04:00

Howdy!

What a nice, relaxing weekend! The University took off for the 4th (surprisingly, given they ignored Memorial Day) so I got to have a bit of a long weekend at home. Charlotte got home from Art Camp on Friday, so we had a couple hours together before she and Dad joined Mom in Massachusetts via a two-day road trip up I95. The same night, Crista and I watched National Treasure, one of the Netflix that Mom ordered. It wasn't totally original, but it was still a pretty good film. We were talking to a friend the next day about it, and it turns out that the entire plot of the movie was "liberated" from a novel of an entirely different name. *sigh* I suppose this film upholds Disney's ~~innovative~~ renovative history.

Today, Crista made some really good hamburgers and I grilled them for all of us still at home. (Crista, Grandma, and me) It was really nice, and a great opportunity to clear out leftovers from the fridge. Crista will be leaving next weekend for the family reunion, so I've got to think about what Grandma and I are going to do for food. I know she likes traditional home-cooked meals, so I'll probably make some cornbread and a shepherd's pie or something. The following week, Crista will be back and I'll fly up to Pennsylvania for my friend's wedding and drive back down with the rest of the family on the 17th of July.

I'm still practicing the piano! The concertos for this fall and possibly more Hymn Keyboard Skills (groan) dash around just out of my peripheral vision, teasing and taunting me. Whenever I'm home and the moments I steal away in the School of Music seem just enough to keep the little spectres back in their mind-crannies, but I can hear them snickering among themselves. They know that as soon as the internship is over, I'll be too weakened to resist them. GAAAAA!!!!

In which Mrs. Royal is delayed and Matthew considers a life in Acadamia

2005-06-28T21:39:00.000-04:00

Dad drove up to Columbia today to drop Mom off at the airport. Independence Air has some really great airfares, and the closest airport they fly to is here in Columbia. Mom's going up to visit my Grandpa, Aunt, and Uncle to help prepare for our family reunion a week or so from now. Unfortunately, her flight was canceled when they found a crack in the luggage compartment. Since the backup plane had a crack too, she missed her connecting flight Washington-Dulles and will probably get in late tonight.

Yesterday, Deepa went through her thesis defense trial run. Aparently, since her faculty advisor will be in Europe during her actual defense, she was allowed to have a somewhat unusal practice run. It wasn't nearly as bad as I was thinking it would be! This really gives me hope for the possibility of someday pursuing my own Masters degree! Hmm... I'm going to have to live in a place with a nice University and start working on having my own post-name-alphabet nights. :)

Which states have YOU been to?

2005-06-28T10:57:00.000-04:00

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Statistical bumps

2005-06-26T23:41:00.000-04:00

Praise the Lord! The Sable is back from the car shop and has its air conditioning working even better than before! The windshield wiper blades are acting up a bit -- had trouble seeing clearly in the rain driving back to Columbia, but I'm sure a little pounding will put them back into their place. }:) Don't get me wrong -- Mom's Explorer is great. Remember all those neat commercials where the SUV is driving out in the middle of a desert or jungle? Y'know... the ones with big boulders that it leaps in a single bound? I have discovered that through a technological breakthrough, Ford has discovered how to let you -- the average suburb dweller -- experience this remarkably liberating experience of having your teeth jolted out of place on the average highway. Yes! You too can feel like you're driving offroad with even the slightest asphaltic imperfections! Go! Buy one now! You should feel this guy on grooved pavement!:D

Today was the last day our family will eat together until the end of July, I believe. Today, Charlotte left for a week long art camp, inciting riots and widespread jealousy in the rest of us who can only dream of fulfilling such artistic aspirations as sculpting, animation, and oil painting. Mom leaves Tuesday to help my aunts prepare for a family reunion a week or so from now. Dad and Charlotte (if she can be pried away from her paintbrushes) will then shoot up to Massachusetts for the reunion, and then lazily float back down the coast, picking up other family members at odd places. I'm flying up to Washington in mid-July for a good friend's wedding, and will catch a ride back with them to Columbia.

Yes, I have again irrationally decided to give away a bit of personal information and many minutes of time to place an icon on my blog. MIT is conducting a survey of bloggers and their habits, and I just couldn't resist. If you have a blog, take a look!

I got to play in church today! Thought we were going to play some pre-specified hymns, but wung it when they started picking new hymns out of the blue. It's good practice, and since Mom will be gone for the next three weeks, it looks like I'll get a whole lot more! ;) This Wednesday, I get to play for the chapel here in Columbia too!

Getting tired... must sleep...

Plumbing Apathy

2005-06-22T12:20:00.000-04:00

Hey! This new dorm that we're in sure is temperamental... first I couldn't get enough water out of my bathroom faucet, and then I couldn't get the toilet's "raging flush" to stop. It was going for over 24 hours solid! Thankfully, I was able to visit with my project partner for most of the day to get way from the noise. After three calls to maintenance and a day's wait, it's now working properly! All it takes to get a job done is persistence! Speaking of which, BlessedFeet has a truly excellent article on apathy being the real root of poverty in our country in her blog. If you read just one other article today online, choose that one!

What a provocative title met my eyes yesterday at my recently stumbled upon favorite, Capitalism Magazine! We Are All Budweisers, by Thomas Sowell has nothing to do with beer, but rather the small town of Budweis in Bohemia where, for a time, Czechs and Germans lived in unity and peace. That is, until ethnic identity politics started tearing this society of Budweisers into separate German and Czechoslovakian camps. Perhaps there is something to be learned here that we can apply in our own country. Too many times, people feel that America needs to increase its diversity and cater to and encourage small groups within our country. Incoming immigrants should serve to enrich our culture and make it grow even richer[NYTimes: free reg.]. America must become a melting pot again until We Are All Americans.

Speaking of nationalist tendencies, it's been interesting how some of my reading has been converging. A friend was talking to me about the policies on religion Hitler's old Reich had, so I thought I should dispel some of my own ignorance and just finished the first chapter of James Murphy's translation of his book Mein Kampf. Hitler's perception of his own goodness is striking, even in the first chapter. He claims at the end of the chapter that he honored his father, but loved his mother. Apparently he ignores how it was admittedly his own refusal to accept his father's dream of his becoming a civil servant that led to his father's embittered death.

Signing off for now... maybe I'll get out and about Columbia with my camera to show you my stomping grounds! :)

2005-06-21T01:06:00.000-04:00

Happy Father's Day!

2005-06-19T22:33:00.000-04:00

Happy Father's Day, Dad!

(All you other fathers can have a good day too. ;D)

The morning started out a little interesting. We had a visitor have a heart attack in the middle of the Lord's Supper this morning. Thankfully, there are two nurses in our assembly and were able to get an ambulance and do CPR and all that very quickly! Remember to keep the man in your prayers!

We had a relaxing day mostly at home. Dad and I drove out to check on Uncle David's house and "rescue" their food from the fridge. ;) They'll be in their Wyoming house for the rest of the summer, so they asked us to finish off their corn, oranges, and other perishables.

I'm back in Columbia now, eagerly anticipating the coming week. We really made some good progress in our background research last week, and it looks like we may get to start coding as early as tomorrow. Perhaps we'll even have the bulk done before the end of the month! That would give us the entire month of July to write the paper, and maybe even expand our research topic.

The water is back too! The city of Columbia was apparently working on the main line leading into our area, and had it back up and running (though a little muddy) around lunch time of the same day it broke.

Have a schmoltzenfodderific day!

Water's not working

2005-06-17T09:13:00.000-04:00

Well, so much for moving to a new dorm to avoid water problems. I woke up this morning and discovered that the water doesn't work; just air in the pipes. Thank goodness I was able to get nearly everything I needed to do done with less than half a water bottle I had in the fridge. Thank you, Hurricane Ivan! :D

New West Quad photos

2005-06-16T19:21:00.000-04:00

I'm all moved in! We had to evacuate from our old suites in South Quad because the University is having some work done on our big steam vent (among other things.) The new dorm is really nice. The furnishings are all new, and I don't think that anyone has ever used this floor before. The rooms are a bit smaller than the ones in the South Quad, but they also have a lot more light! I really like working here at my computer desk -- there's just the right balance between subdued lighting and daylight to be unobstrusive. Click the photo to see all my photos from USC, including the ones of the new dorm!

We didn't have a morning session with our REU program administrators this morning, so I got to sleep in! It is such a wonderful feeling! What makes today even better is we got a lot of work done. Steve and my faculty advisors are in a big meeting in Washington, but have keptin touch with email. It looks like we will finally get to the bulk of the coding in the next week or so... possibly even tackling more of the project than we had originally thought possible! We may even write two papers this summer instead of just one! (Wonder if they'll pay us for an extra one too. ;D)

The battery on my poor digital watch died sometime today, so I need to run out to Wally World to pick up another cheapskate timepiece.

In more interesting news, I just discovered a really great extension that works in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and more! It's called StumbleUpon, and helps you stuble upon all sorts of interesting websites you may never have found even with Google. When you sign up, you specify which areas of interest about which you would like to find websites, and simply click the Stumble! button. It's taken me to all sorts of great places today! The idea behind it is when you find a neat website, you tell Stumbler through the handy toolbar. If it's a site no one else has ever told Stumbler about, you just put it into a category and write a brief, optional comment.

I've already ordered merchandise off of a website I stumbled across. It's a great site called GardenGuides and has a nice herbs section. They have really great prices for bulk seeds! They're offering a pound of dill seeds for $10 -- that's about 160,000 seeds! You can, of course, buy them in much smaller quantities. I bought a "pinch" for 75 cents, which is apparently even larger than a normal seed packet you pick up at the garden shop. I'm looking for low-light, drought-tolerant, decorative and edible plants for college. I once had a jade plant in my room at PCC, but I couldn't give it enough light. It's now permanently enjoying our subtropical temperatures back home next to the lemon and orange trees on our front walk.

Another cool site I stumbled across is Investopedia. It has a lot of good information on investing for beginners. This is something I'm really interested in right now, seeing as I'm going to be graduating in a couple years from college and have no school debt. Check it out! They have an entire section on mutual funds!

Dorms and AC

2005-06-13T22:59:00.000-04:00

Yet another great weekend back home in Augusta! Saturday evening, we went to Mr. Rainey's open house there behind the chapel. It was a really great time getting to know him a bit better and fellowshipping with the rest of Bethany. ...and there was this amazing Hazelnut cream coffee... ;D I went out to Winn Dixie tonight and bought some creamer and sugar. Don't get me wrong, I love to drink black coffee -- but not for more than a week.

On Sunday, Charlotte and I were driving home from church, and just as we pulled into the driveway, the air conditioning stopped and the engine started smoking. Praise the Lord that it wasn't on the highway! Dad and I performed extensive tests to determine exactly what was wrong and after much experimentation and well-thought through reasonings have determined... that the air conditioning is broken. :) I brought it back up to Columbia and it did fine -- it was just really hot. The days have been up in the 90s, so tonight I sneaked out ~9pm to get groceries. (It was still really warm!)

In other news, last night, I ran into another of the REU program participants, and she informed me that we had to move to a new dormitory. Dr. Eastman had warned us on Friday that we may have to move becacuse of maintenance work that needed to be done in South Quad. We all hustled in getting our stuff over to our new home (West Quad.) The inside is a lot nicer and newer than South Quad's, but I sure miss the steam vent that was right outside my window. Every morning had that wonderful Shangrila/Baker Street/"Jane Goodall and the Gorillas in the Mist" eeriness that reminds you how good it is just to sit down and drink your morning coffee.

Progress!

2005-06-09T23:36:00.000-04:00

Today we presented our research proposals in front of our two faculty advisors and our peers. I think it went rather well! After the morning meeting, I pretty much got to hang around my room the whole day. When I transfered to this project, I returned my key to the security lab and in exchange have access to the Software Engineering lab now. Unfortunately, the system administrator is away on vacation and can't set us up with an Internet connection. Therefore, Steve (my partner in this project) and I have been working from our own PCs in the dorms. It's been working out really well; I find that it's convenient having my research all here on my computer. Together, we made a lot of headway evaluating one of the two semantic parsing tools we've been examining tonight. We wrote a couple of analyzation tools and are working on having our program automatically evaluate the results generated from the parser.

Enough geeky stuff! My sister just sent me an email today informing me that she has updated her photo album on Flickr. It has a grand assortment of Great American Roadtrip Adventure vacation shots! Go take a look! Go! Especially if you were there! She has some ancient graduation shots with old gang members in them -- so go check those out too!

Tomorrow is going to be GREAT! We get to take a tour of the library! Hopefully, I'll be able to find it, because we're meeting there instead of the Swearingen Engineering Building for our morning meeting. After that, dependning on what Steve wants to do, I might get to go back home while it's still daylight out! Some weekend, I'm going to have to stay in Columbia just to go the zoo! Last weekend, Mom and Dad gave me my renewed membership card to the National Science Center museums, so I'll need to drive up to Charlotte and explore their science center again. Unless things have changed, they have one of the 3 largest IMAX theaters in the world there.

I'm gonna try to get to bed now so I'll have time to find the library tomorrow morning ... if I can ever finish all these incoming emails. :)

Boys' State

2005-06-08T22:51:00.000-04:00

Hey Gang!

Even during the summer, there's always things going on here at USC! There are tons of summer camps for highschoolers. There's one in particular that has big rallies in the field right outside my window. I can hear them yelling and cheering and having a grand old time in my room and in the kitchen. At first, I thought it was a riot on television! ;D Despite what the picture looks like, there are a TON of guys on the field -- it extends waaaay to the left and right of the trees, and that field is bigger than a normal one for some reason.

Today was my first official day on the T2BN: Text to Bayesian Networks project. It looks really challenging! I'm hoping that my partner and I can come up with something substantive in the two months we have to work on it.

Got to go to Bethany Chapel here in Columbia again tonight. Afterwards, I went over to the School of Music and explored a bit. They have posters for a Madrigal group, but I don't think they're meeting during the summer. I was really tempted to call the Summer choir leader, but they started practicing at the end of May, and one of their performances is on a Sunday afternoon when I would prefer to be home in Augusta. The practice rooms are nice as far as I can tell -- they all have locks and I could only get into ones that people didn't completely close the doors to. ;D I wonder if this is going to be a good, consistent way to find a place to practice.

On a personal level, I'm kinda down about some things going on right now so I feel a bit sapped. For those moments when you are feeling apathetic, go over and visit ApathyOnline. It's a news site run by a college friend of mine. The thrust of the site is to show people some of the outrageous things happening in our country (and government) today in an attempt to arouse people out of their apathy and into the voting booth... or into action-oriented conversation with others. It's really a good idea.

Get up and do something!

Put up some pictures!

2005-06-07T19:04:00.000-04:00

Hey gang!

You know I've been going on about Flickr, the free photo album that makes it easy to share pictures with your friends... Join and start sharing some of the awesome memories we've had together! Crista sent this one that I've never seen before. This was the Christmas fine arts The Importance of Being Earnest. I'm sure you guys have all sorts of photos too, so why not create a free account! I will continue to search the web for cool stuff like this and talk about it here on my blog. Even if photo aren't your thing, perhaps I'll find something cool you'd like to use. ;)

There are a couple places here on the urban USC campus that I'd still like to investigate. The Russell House has a big Student Union, bookstore, and more! I've got to remember to budget in a USC shirt to remember this summer before I leave at the end of July. Also, we were given our Thomas Cooper Library cards today and have a tour scheduled this Friday to see their multimedia lab. That'll be really cool! One of the other program participants was telling me about the local Richland County library. It's a HUGE green glass building a half dozen blocks or so away. The membership is $30 for the year, but from what she was saying, it has a really nice selection -- much nicer than the Augusta library system probably. ;) Seriously, our local library system cares more about having nice brand new buildings than they do about having a decent collection: they keep having book sales every time I drive by it seems. We have all of these books in our house we're trying to get rid of on eBay and Half.com that we would have donated to the library if we could know for sure they wouldn't turn around and sell them for a buck.

The School of Music has a large building not too far away too that I'm hoping has practice rooms I could use. Gotta look into it...

This weekend, I got to go back home and visit the family. On Saturday, we had a whole day long picnic out at West Dam. Great times of hotdogs and fellowship are such happy moments in life! Dad, Crista, and I took a quick trip after lunch to check on Uncle David and Aunt Merris' new house in Lincolnton since they're away right now. It's a good thing too since two windows had been left open. They got a great house! Corps land is right behind it, and they even have a boat dock with swinging benches. It would be really cool to get a used Jet ski and dock it there. Thurmond Lake is so HUGE you'd never run out of places to ski around and explore. I think it has 1200-some miles of shoreline! The only negative thing I have to say about the area is the ticks. I flicked a tick off my leg while we were down at the dock talking, and when I got back to Columbia I had to yank one off my side. (I've got a huge bump now.) We went back to the picnic and spent the whole afternoon and part of the evening there and had another great meal. Visiting the chapel on Sunday was another highlight of the trip.

I'm hoping to be able to go back home nearly every weekend, but I still want to go the zoo here in Columbia, find the Happy Bookseller, possibly go down to Charleston and see what it's all about, and maybe take a quick trip up to Charlotte to see the science center there.

Keep in touch!

Georgia Renaissance Festival

2005-06-07T18:54:00.000-04:00

Hey ya'll!

I finally got around to processing some of the photos I took two weeks ago when Miss Cindy, Crista, and I went to the Georgia Renaissance Festival. It's really quite a nice setup -- they have all sorts of special areas for corporate visitors, and even have a nice, green field for your picture perfect fairytale wedding! I got a number of pretty nice photos from the trip. You've got to go and try the food! They're finished for this season, but drop on by next year to have an historically inaccurate, yet delightful time!

I've updated my Flickr photo album to include all of the Georgia Renaissance festival photos in one group. Click here to see all the festival photos!

Happenings

2005-06-01T20:22:00.000-04:00

Hey again!

Bethany Chapel was certainly a blessing! There are a fairly small group of believers there, but tonight's meeting was a wonderful time of prayer and reflection. They were really excited to hear that I go to the Bethany Chapel in Augusta, and seemed to already know some of the happenings there. When I told some of the women there that Les Rainy (spelling?) is living in the house behind the chapel, they were enthusiastically making plans for asking him to come, visit, and speak. :) They were saying that Mr. Rainy was one of their favorite speakers at the youth conferences they attended as girls, and that he was always an encouragement to them to live strongly for the Lord.

The prayer meeting didn't seem to last very long! Tonight, I'm hoping to find a Barnes and Nobles in eastern Columbia and read the remaining 32 pages of a 36 page paper for tomorrow. The professor who is in charge of my area of study (Inference Control[links to powerpoint] for XML data) arrived back in Columbia today after a vacation, and there is a chance of me being able to meet with her to discuss my project for the summer. Hopefully, after reading this paper, I will be prepared to at least understand the technical jargon and basic concepts related to the field so I will be able to explore possible topics ... or even as Deepa, a Masters student who is also helping us REU folk, said, the meeting will let me know whether this is a field I want research. She seems concerned that since there has been so little work done in Inference Control (and its seeming impossibility,) that finding a suitable two-month project may be difficult.

Even if it's something that it turns out I'd rather not do, apparently a guy who got selected for the other project I'd like to work on is looking at our project instead. The other project is called T2BN: Text to Bayesian Networks, and is supposed to result in software that accepts regular text and produces cause and effect relationships from the text. The Dr. heading up that program says that it'll be used on field reports in intelligence agencies in order to help link possibly related events more quickly and efficiently. Sounds like fun!

In other news, since I got Internet access, I can show you all what USC looks like -- starting with my room! The rooms are nice, though smaller than the Young Tower PCC rooms. Of course, I get my OWN room instead of sharing it with three other guys, and there's a bigger shared living area the same size or larger than the room at PCC... ;) You can see more pictures of my room and the entire suite on my Flickr photo album. WEll, I'm gonna head of to Barnes and Nobles now ... looks like the guy I was waiting for won't return from his Bible study in time. Later!

Internet is working (for now)

2005-06-01T17:52:00.000-04:00

This is my third day here at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, and I finally got Internet access! It turns out my username and password were bad, so this morning, I called the CS help desk for the 5th time and they sent a troupe here to figure out what was wrong. They discovered... that my username and password were bad. ;) Well at least something can be done about it now. :D Right now, I'm still logged in using the tech's password, though I'm not sure how long it will last.

Tonight, I'm going to visit an assembly recommended to me from someone at church. It'll be great! It's really close too!

I'll try to post some more tonight on what's been going on with the internship, and perhaps even some photos of the dormitory!

Photo update!

2005-05-27T21:46:00.000-04:00

Howdy!

This online photo album thing has been really fun! I just added over 100 more photos to my Flickr account! Click here to see my album! They're all photos from school in the past couple years: fine arts, graduations, and just regular life.

Let me know what you think!

Well, the last of my laundry is in the wash. After I pack that up in my suitcase and put some hangables in the garment bag, I think I'll be ready for this internship thing! The car looks really great now that it's clean -- I wonder if it'll stay that way until Sunday! ;D

Sometime in the early afternoon, I got to talk to Brittany and Stephanie! They're hanging out at Stephanie's place in Lynchburg, and are planning on terrorizing Richmond for who knows how long. :) It sounds like a lot of fun and sure makes me miss those grand gals.

Gotta go fold laundry now!

PCC Professors

2005-05-27T15:32:00.000-04:00

Hey gang!

Just restumbled across this site while Googlin' around for something else. It's called RateMyProfessors.com, and gives you an inside view of how students at many different colleges and universities around the U.S. view view their professors. The Pensacola Christian College page has a rather extensive list of professors. Most of the ones I've looked at (professors I've had for classes) look fair. Maybe it's worth a look if you're considering PCC... It's really remarkable how many people marked the professors as being really helpful!

In other news, I got to help another person with computer problems this morning. Later, after lunch, I vacuumed the car I'm taking with me to Columbia and washed most of the dirt off. It's 85 degrees right now, so wet is FUN! ;D Speaking of heat, I hear that Russians were complaining a couple days ago when they lost power in Moscow during their 70 degrees "heat wave." Must be your perspective. :) Now, I'm packing my stuff up into a couple boxes. I'm gonna try to finish loading up tonight, because tomorrow Crista, Miss Cindy, and I are going to the Georgia Renaissance Festival in Atlanta Saturday! My family went earlier this month before I got home from college, and they said that while it wasn't entiiiiirely historically accurate, it was a lot of fun.

It'll be grand!

Depressed

2005-05-26T23:22:00.000-04:00

Hey all. Please pray for me: I just got some rather bad news and have to make some pretty big decisions this summer. Thanks.

Online photo album!

2005-05-23T23:53:00.000-04:00

Hey, gang!

I registered with the folks at Flickr and made up a couple online photo albums of things that happened this past semester. Hop on over and take a look at all the cool features! You can access my photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/masyukun/. Add it to your bookmarks: more photos are on the way from college and then later my internship in Columbia, SC!

Proposed Fall 2005 School Schedule

2005-05-23T20:56:00.000-04:00

Hey, gang!

Now that I've had such a nice time to rest and relax, I thought I'd put some time into thinking about what needs to happen next year. If you click on the PDF logo, you can download the schedule I registered for for this coming Fall semester. This is one of the best schedules I've ever had! It's right up there with that one freshman semester where I had ZERO morning classes! ;D Ah, no first hour classes AND I get to eat lunch right after chapel most days.

Unfortunately, I may have to change it. Looking into Computer Science graduate programs, I discovered that the University of Utah, for example, requires a score of 80% on the Quantitative section of the Computer Science GRE. For some weird reason, my Software Engineering degree doesn't even include a class in Probability and Statistics, which is the prerequisite for Quantitative Methods. Therefore, if I want to do well on the GRE, I need to take BOTH Prob. Stats and Quantitative. Since I'm already slated for 19 credits for all four of my remaining semesters, it means I have to figure out how I can shove a couple more classes into postterms -- double postterms, here I come!

Windows Programming looks like another really good course to have before I graduate since all of the programs we've done so far are all terminal-based.

Gotta go!

Graduation reception and syzygy

2005-05-23T01:33:00.000-04:00

Charlotte's graduation reception was from 3:00 - 6:00 today at our house. It went really well and I think that way more people than the 7 that RSVPed came! :D Here's that photo of Charlotte graduating, as promised! She did really well delivering her speech. It was a poem she wrote herself and lots of people asked for copies after the ceremony. *sniff* That's MY sister! :*)

After the reception today, Miss Cindy stayed and we got to listen to some fun music about cell phones and play Syzygy, one of our favorite word games. We then finished that movie that we started the other night, and I stayed up late reading email and replying with telephone directory thoroughcity.

Speaking of which... Nite!

Graduations

2005-05-22T00:34:00.000-04:00

Today marked the end of an important period in my family's collective life. My little sister Charlotte graduated from highschool. Thus ends our 12th year of homeschooling. I suppose you're never really finished homeschooling -- it's really a way of life, I suppose. Even though I'm a senior in college, I still consider myself a homeschooler. Homeschooling left me with a life-long passion and hunger for learning. It's something no ceremony could make me part with, and I know the same is true for Charlotte.

Meanwhile, Mom has now finished homeschooling her third and final child. It sounds like she's still dead set on a cruise in the bahamas now that it's over. ;)

We got to visit another family this afternoon whose homeschooler is graduated today. It was really great catching up! I even got the opportunity to help him fix his wireless Internet problem. :)

All that's left is an open house reception tomorrow afternoon -- so if you're in the area, drop by! ;) We decorated tonight for the party and then all watched the first half of a movie together. (It's late so we'll save the rest of it for some other time.)

Oh, One more thing! Thanks to Sehrgut's helpful comment, I hope that my image hosting problem has been permanently resolved. I was only able to salvage photos up through the Wyoming trip last summer though, so no more adorable kitty photos of Gracie and Cleo. ;)

Well, "The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten;" I must retire now. I got many many photos from the ceremony today, so I hope to have some up tomorrow or perhaps Monday for you farflung folk. 'Night!

Blog Pictures are fading!

2005-05-21T02:42:00.000-04:00

Aack! It seems that the free server that hosts my pictures has mysteriously eaten them. Hmm... I'll have to come up with some alternative. Anybody have an idea?

Back!

2005-05-21T01:03:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the long silence! The Spring semester was absolutely crazy! Grades are looking good except for Hymn Keyboard Skills. *bites fingernails* I'm praying really hard for the end of the semester grade report that's supposed to arrive sometime in the mail. Usually, instead of being worried about having passed a class, I'm worrying about losing my 'A'. Ah well, everyone always says college lets you experience new things. ;)

One truly learns new things each day. Tonight, I learned that it is illegal to artificially "colour" margarine in Canada. A fascinating history of Canada's conflicted relationship with margarine tells all. Interestingly, margarine was banned until 1948 by an apparently effective block of dairy farmers who foretold a bleak future of milk-shortages if the pasty yellow chemical stuff were ever allowed within Canada's borders.

Anyhoo, starting May 29, I will be participating in the University of South Carolina's Computer Science Department's summer internship program. I'm not sure exactly which project I'm working on yet -- don't have the info yet, but I've already faxed in my application to get Internet access in the dormitory. ;)

Looking around online for directions getting there sure was fun! Google has a great new feature called Google Maps that lets you see road maps all over the US in excruciating detail. They even have maps of my neighborhood! The site lets you plan trips like Mapquest, but the interface looks much cleaner and is easier and faster to use too since you can just click and drag the map around in the window instead of clicking on edge arrows and waiting for it to load. One last cool feature lets you instantly overlay satellite maps over the area you are looking at. It zooms in quite nicely to the point that you can see the cars that were zooming along on the Interstate when the satellite photo was shot.

Tonight we ate at my little sister Charlotte's graduation reception dinner. It was very nice. The location, First Baptist Church of Evans, is absolutely huge. The grounds of the church campus are very nice. The CSRA-Home Education Assocation's graduations have been so big that we've been having trouble finding places large enough to rent. I think the year I graduated, we had 53 graduates. Even at First Baptist it's standing room only what with all the immediate families, extended relatives, and goodness knows how many friends (what about socialization my foot). Well, just 12 hours until the ceremony, so I should get to sleep!

And so it begins...

2005-02-01T09:55:00.000-05:00

I had my first bout of quizzes yesterday. Counterpoint was rough -- I really should have re-reviewed the characteristics of 16th and 18th-century counterpoint and ALL of the characteristics of a good melodic line. On the other hand, I gave an impromptu speech on flashlights that went quite well. :)

We have a guest coming to stay in our room! Apparently, our room has been too clean the past couple of days. ;) This should be interesting having one so soon in the semester. I think it was last weekend that Charlotte was going up to Greeneville to visit Bob Jones University (and spend time with her friend Nina who is also looking at the school.) I haven't heard anything from her yet, so I guess the trip was uneventful.

Another praise! I got good grades back from the Interterm yesterday. I came back from Christmas vacation two weeks early to take Business Communications. It brought my GPA up back to where it was before last semester! This is good because I have to maintain a certain GPA in order to continue overloading on credit hours to graduate on time.

I'm singing for a graduate choir this semester and practice starts tonight! It's going to be so much fun! We're already practicing for this weekend's Vespers in Madrigal Singers. It's really nice to be involved with extra-curricular music activities to offset the insanity of Operating Systems/Counterpoint/Private Piano. Please pray that I'll make it through this semester.

Done with Interterm!

2005-01-23T14:34:00.000-05:00

Business Communications is now behind me! I haven't gotten
my final grade yet, but I'm praying for the best. It was probably
one of the most practical classes I've taken yet, and I have
a nice thick reference notebook I made during class from our
assignments, notes, and syllabus that will come in handy
whenever I have to write something. :)

People are beginning to trickle in here at school now. There
were actually a couple sections filled up in the balcony this
morning in church where before we were stuggling to occupy
the lower level. Getting back into this whole singing thing after
the Christmas break feels a bit weird, but it's fun. :) Crista,
Joy, and James should arrive Monday after a whole
weekend of having fun without me back in Augusta. *pout*

In the meantime, we have a nice little break that we can
use to sleep... er... prepare for the start of the semester in a
couple days. Personally, I've been trying to get Windows XP
installed on an extra hard drive which IT claims is corrupt.
Maybe I'll just install FreeBSD instead. ;)

My friend Laura lent me some of her violin music so I could
play with the accompaniment. I haven't done any accompaniment
yet, but I know I will have at least a year required starting
next fall. My sight reading is really bad, so I'm hoping that it
will start to improve with lots and lots of practice. Maybe
I'll even get to play for some of the Chamber ensembles!

See ya!

Caesura

2005-01-16T12:26:00.000-05:00

We are at the halfway point here in our two-week courses. Today, I got to spend some time relaxing in the Library's Media Lab watching "Empowering Appraisal:" it's a video about how to give annual appraisals in a positive, reinforcing sort of way. It was actually quite funny. On my way out the library, I saw an old friend and got to talk with him for a while. :)

After that, I practiced the piano some in my dorm's practice rooms. I made it through my Bach prelude (VIII, book II) remarkably well, though I think it was because I was zoning out. ;D

This week has been fun and useful. In class, we've written resumes and learned how to appropriately tailor them to a whole bunch of different job application situations. I'm looking for a Computer Science internship for this summer, so it's been really cool. Crista emailed me an 87-page long list of internship possibilities (which I printed off in the library.)

Gotta go!

Arrived at PCC!

2005-01-12T03:59:00.000-05:00

Hey, Gang!

Dad and I arrived safely in PCC yesterday afternoon. Registration was really easy, and I get to stay in my regular semester room! This is great because now I don't have to move my computer desk now. :) Dad's return trip hom was delayed a little bit, because last night we found a nail in one of the Sable's tires. He took it to Walmart's auto repair center this morning, and they ended up replacing the entire tire.

In the meantime, Business Communications looks like it will be a really great course. I'm hoping that it will be nice and easy so I'll have time to practice the piano -- I'm supposed to play in two different competitions so far this semester and neither of the pieces is learned. 0:)

Gotta get to work!

Back to school again

2005-01-07T17:12:00.000-05:00

It seems as though I have been home just a couple of days instead of three weeks. I went and got my hairs cut at the barbershop today.

Originally, we were going to take my friend Gretchen back down with us since she is taking the same Interterm course that I am (Business Communications,) but something came up and she is riding down with her parents: meaning I can take even MORE stuff! }:)

I'm cleaning at the same time so that James will have a clean place to stay when he stops through in two weeks. I really wish I had had time to go buy a shotgun case, but Walmart doesn't carry extra short ones -- my shotgun is really short for quick maneuvering. ;)

I'm still praying for a good summer job in Augusta. I would really like to get some Computer experience. I've a couple good leads, but nothing definite. Please pray!

By the way, is anyone still reading this? I'd like to know whether I should continue sending updates at school.

Looking for a summer job

2005-01-04T03:08:00.000-05:00

Hey all!

Time grows short before I must return to school. Crista and I spent the evening at Miss Cindy's eating Chinese takeout and watching TV. :) It was so much fun! One of my favorite memories ever is watching movies while eating hot popcorn with M&M's mixed in. The M&M's juuust start to melt inside, and taste so good!

Tomorrow -- *looks at the clock* Ok, later today, actually -- I'm going to try to pierce the vast bureaucracies of several human resource departments in the area to find a Computer Science related job. I've already checked into a number of stores and companies, but haven't had any success yet. I was, however, able to talk to a good friend on Sunday, and she recommended quite a few good leads.

In other news, I'm hoping to pop in on my piano teacher tomorrow and play my repertoire from this past semester. She's having some sort of seminar at her house for the Augusta Music Teachers Association (AMTA) on Friday that I'm looking forward to as well.

Getting sleepy. Bye!

Done decorating

2004-12-23T20:36:00.000-05:00

Well, the tree is finally ornamented, and there are lights and garlands all over the house now. Crista found a deeply discounted outside Christmas tree light thingy. It looks nice. :) I'm done wrapping my presents for everyone now... so I guess now we just need to wait!

Shopping, fruitcake, and fudge... oh my!

2004-12-23T16:56:00.000-05:00

It's all done too! Grandma and I just finished the fudge about an hour ago. I should really get on the ball and start wrapping everyone's gifts though. The Christmas lights are on the tree now, and everything is looking festive thanks to my sisters. Mom just flew back home from Massachusetts last night, though she'll be returning next Wednesday to be with Grandpa once he comes home from the hospital.

In other news, I have been surprised with how quickly I've been picking up my new piano pieces for next semester. I'm working on Brahms Rhapsody in G minor, Bach's Prelude VIII (and maybe the fugue) Book II from the Well-Tempered Claiver, Ernst von Dohnanyi's Rhapsody in C, Schubert's Sonata in A (DV664), and a couple really nice sacred arrangements by a graduate student who went to PCC and left behind a really nice volume. Hopefully, I'll be able to complete at least a couple of these before Interterm so I can work on even more cool stuff during the semester!

Today, I joined Baptistboard.com. It looks like a really interesting forum for ... Baptists. :) I really hope to find some good friends there... maybe I'll even find some ones there that I already know!

Back home!

2004-12-20T23:20:00.000-05:00

Yay! I'm back home again from PCC! I have three weeks until I go back for my Interterm class (Business Communications.) I've really got to get on the ball and finish my Christmas shopping! I'm going to try to get out to the Mall again tomorrow, and then swing by Borders and CompUSA to see what's happening. Maybe pick up a book or two for Charlotte. :)

Linux Unwired

2004-08-31T01:16:00.000-04:00

Qa'pla! I finally got my Linksys WUSB11v2.6 wireless network adapter working with Linux! There were a couple of issues I had to work through in order to get everything working right -- namely changing over from usb-uhci to uhci and figgerin' out how to get the package to compile right under a 2.6 kernel. It even works after rebooting! Yay! Now the long gray cable that's been tripping everybody as they come up the stairs is gone! Let's see if they notice tomorrow morning! ;)

Open House

2004-08-26T19:09:00.000-04:00

I just got back from my piano teacher's open house! It didn't go half bad! I started with The Light of the World is Jesus, arranged by Mark Hayes, and then played Alexander Tcherepnin's Bagatalle No. 3, and Beethoven's Pathetique, movement 1. Thank you for the prayers, John and Joy, they really helped!

In other news, the Sekeraks arrived last night, and will be staying until Sunday, I believe. They just moved to Huntsville, AL from New Mexico. On their way, they stopped at a airline lost luggage store -- the place all unclaimed bags and contents go. Angie bought a really nice camera for her Photography course this coming semester (she also attends PCC.) Today, she went to see a friend who owns a Photo shop here in Augusta to get the rest of the parts she needs. While she still needs a filter or five, I think she's almost all set. She's out testing the camera by taking some pictures of the neighborhood right now.

I joined Distributed Proofreaders today! It's a group that checks OCR'd ebooks for errors for Project Gutenberg. It looks like a lot of fun! I just wish that we had unfiltered Internet access at school: I was talking to John tonight -- who is also in Pensacola, but working on a second undergrad degree from Univerity of Florida -- and he said that the impression he got from some summer workers he had met was that the 'net access would be about like we had in the Library before. Meaning, even the Entertainment and Sports sections on CNN are blocked out. *sigh* Ah well. It would have been too much of a distraction anyway. :)

See ya!

Pianoing

2004-08-23T17:39:00.000-04:00

Well, I spent most of today playing the piano. I found the big box I had here at home, finally. It was in my room... I tell you what -- It'll take a while to get that thing clean if I keep taking days at a time to investigate some thing or the other I find there. I played all the 30's show tunes yesterday, and moved on to Classical today. I've got to brush up on the Pathetique for a Thursday/Friday open house my highschool piano teacher is having for her students.

My Hutchins and Rea order came in today! I got 15% off my entire order thanks to a special special they're having. I ordered Rhapsody in C by Dohnanyi, and Concertos I, II, and III by Beethoven.

After practicing, I got out to the bank to deposit the Subway cheques that (finally) came from Wyoming, picked up some Lexmark 70 ink for Mom at Staples, and browsed CompUSA. I found a 2-CD set of Schubert at Borders' Books and Music for just 13-ish dollars! Lili Klaus is so cool! She plays DV 664 so well! I MUST practice those runs before school starts! She also has some interesting ideas about how the Sonata is supposed to be played... but I'm not sure I like all of them.

Gotta go! My piano teacher is here! :)

Back and Bumming

2004-08-18T00:42:00.000-04:00

Hey again!

Well, Crista and I arrived safely home again. We flew out of Rock Springs, WY about 6:45am MT, and after a short layover in Denver, we arrived in Atlanta around 2:20pm ET. The carpet guys came today and installed the new carpet in the living room and dining room. The reason for the new carpet and paint jobs in some of the rooms is earlier this year during the spring semester, a large storm came through and knocked several branches off our drought-stressed trees. I think there were a total of 5 or 6 limbs sticking through the roof after that one. The roofers were able to replace it in only one day, but this whole INterior process has proved much more of an ordeal.

Anyhoo... I've gotten to fix some problems with some friends' computers, and have tried to get most of the items that I need for school. I still have three weeks, but it'd be nice to relax for a change just before leaving. ;D

I was talking to John -- who is already in Pensacola for his second degree with the University of Florida, I believe -- the other night, and he was able to give me the formulas for regressions. I've been looking all OVER the 'net for them, so I'm really thrilled! So far, the analysis tool I've written handles linear and logarithmic regressions flawlessly. I still have to work out the bugs on the exponential and power regressions... for some reason, the A value doesn't want to come out right, even though it's the same basic formula the logarithmic function is using. *sigh* Oh well. Anyway, so far it's just a command prompt program with different argument switches, but I'm planning on adapting it into a module which will perform each type of regression by default and automatically compare the R^2 values in order to find the best fit to the data points.

Last night, I completely rearranged my room. The computer is set up, but I haven't booted it yet, meaning that all of this has been done on my Mom's computer with a free C++ compiler I downloaded called lcc. It's actually quite nice and light-weight, but I think she'll be happy to have her computer back soon. :)

The piano spent most of the day in the kitchen with all of the other furniture, so I wasn't able to practice as much as I would have liked. I got a little done last night, but I suppose I really should start again in earnest in preparation for the semester. I need to find some time to get down to Power's Pianos and rifle through their sheet music collection. Mom has already promised me the use of her ragtime book this semester, and I want to borrow some of her men's quartet and singing group folios as well in hopes of getting something going in my collegian.

Got the prescription for my contacts/glasses today too. Hopefully, I'll get new contacts in a couple days. The doctor there gave me a set of Acuvue 2's to wear, so now I have two sets to last me.

Well that's all the news I can think about now. I should go to bed now.

Off for home!

2004-08-14T10:44:00.000-04:00

Well, we're leaving this afternoon for the airpot at Rock Springs. We're spending the night at the Motel 6 there, and will leave tomorrow morning precisely at 6:45-ish. Crista and I managed to convince Uncle David to take Wolfgang along! (yay!) :) After a short stop in Denver, we'll arrive in Atlanta around 1:00pm Eastern Standard Time. Guess it's time for school again. ;D

A Week Awandering in Wyoming

2004-08-11T00:17:00.000-04:00

Hey again!

My sister Crista flew into Rock Springs this past Sunday, and things have been very busy ever since! We left Monday morning for Yellowstone and spent three days there touristing like there was no tomorrow. After seeing the Wind River mountains up close and personal not so long ago, and having driven to Wyoming through the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, Yellowstone was actually a bit of a disappointment. The mountains were nice, but not as glorious as say, the ones we see driving to town here. What was REALLY cool about Yellowstone though was all the geysers! They come in all shapes, sizes, and sounds. From big, brown fog horns to red little spurts, I think I took a photo of every major one in the park!

Before this trip, I had taken 644 pictures of my summer vacation out here in the West, from California to Wyoming. This week alone, I took 750.

The camping in the Park was interesting. It was surprisingly crowded with RVs, and the Park doesn't allow you to camp outside the designated (and expensive) camping grounds. I tried starting a fire the first night, but Uncle David made me stop after 20 minutes of pouring rain. ;)

In case any of you are planning a trip to Yellowstone, the Park's main roads form a figure 8, and most of the really cool places to go are on the lower loop. Old Faithful was definitely a high point (har har), and the lodge there is a lot of fun!

After our three days in Yellowstone, we made a jaunt over to Cody. There, we saw the Old Trail Town, a recreation of an Old West town. Several notable figures' graves had been exhumed and relocated to the town including W.A. Gallagher, Blind Bill, Liver-eating Johnson, and Belle, the lady in blue. All of the buildings there are original structures which have been relocated. They had a schoolhouse, general store, carriage house... even the hideout cabin that the Hole in the Wall gang used to plan several major bank robberies! It was nifty!

Also in Cody, we saw the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, a collection of 5 museums including the Whittier Gallery of Art, a gun collection housing 2700 arms, the Buffalo Bill museum, an Indian musueum, and the Drapier Museum of Nation History. There was a special exhibit under the Indian museum of a whole bunch of bronze statues. Really cool. There was also a video there about how they make bronzes, starting with concept drawings, and following through all the way from the original clay statue to the final poured product and shipping process. It was an old Art school film, and had "flash cards" instead of sound. :)

It was incredible to me how much misleading and just plain wrong information was displayed in the Natural Museum of History. Perhaps it shouldn't surprise me, but there were so many naturalistic, liberal, and environmentalist worldviews present as well, that some of the displays were a bit nauseating. There was one in particular that was describing the tragedies that occur when grizzly bears and human beings come into contact. It lamented that grizzlies were often poached. I couldn't believe my eyes! It made absolutely no mention of the numerous cases in which grizzlies have gone out of their way to attack humans for no reason! What about all of the times they've maimed, murdered, or eaten whole innocent people, completely unprovoked! }:{ *shudders*

...

The number of grammatical errors in the displays were also astounding. ;)

Anyway. After Cody, we proceeded on to Cheyenne, which is on the Southeastern border of Wyoming -- Boulder is on the far West side. We spent the night there since it was getting quite late, and in the morning, I competed in my first Cowboy Action Shooting match! It was fun! I'm also now a member of the Single Action Shooting Society. Basically, Cowboy Shooting entails dressing up in period clothing -- I've still got to get the britches -- and shooting steel targets in a scenario that can run from a high-noon shootout, to takin' out the bad guys robbing a bank. Most stages require a shotgun, pistols, and rifle, but occasionally you only need one or a combination of the three. This time, there was one stage that was exclusively shotgun (I got a good time on that one,) and another where you used all the guns, but had to shoot from the hip. 8| That was a toughie: I missed five times. XP

On the way back home that evening, we celebrated my Uncle's and my birthday at a restaurant called the Hungry Miner. I got to drive back to Boulder the 200-something miles that were left after dinner! It was my first time hauling a trailer on a standard transmission diesel! Fun fun FUN! :D

Yesterday, we spent the day in Jackson Hole with Dave and Barbie and ate at the Bar J. After a nearly-authentic chuckwagon meal, they perform Western, or cowboy, music for a couple hours. They are veyr funny, and the music is very good. Uncle David was thrilled that they played the Orangeblossom Special. :) I bought two tapes, and Crista bought some CDs.

Anyhoo, I'm gettin' sorta tired now. We put up some more walls up in the loft, fixed the riding lawnmower and cleared a lot of growth, installed another light fixture and a bunch of insulation. Crista completely cleaned out the camper, which was quite a feat! Have a good one!

Hanging around

2004-07-31T00:24:00.000-04:00

Hey!

Well, yesterday was my last day at Subway. It was fun while it lasted, but I'm really not sure that I want to do something like that again. I definitely would like to be able to get that computer internship next year. (hope hope) Denise, my boss at Subway, wanted me to stay, and was asking me if I'd be coming back next summer. :D Everybody keeps asking me that!

I stayed here at the cabin today, working on various things. I feel like I did not get much done today. I sanded and put the final coat of polyurethane on the washroom door, the wall segment by the front door, and all the light switch and electrical receptacle face plates. Also, I applied the first coat of varnish to all of the loft ceiling and the walls that we have up so far. I ran out of staples for the staple gun, so I wasn't able to finish putting up the plastic sheeting that goes over the insulation on the other walls. :(

At lunch today, I broke my minesweeper speed time for Expert! Under 100 seconds now! Whoopee!!! 8D

Made some deviled eggs tonight... they don't taste quiiiite right though. I think I was supposed to use sweet relish instead of dill. (oops) Well, now I know.

Uncle David and I will be hanging around the house tomorrow. We'll probably wash the Bronco and clean out the Dodge so it'll be all nice and sparkly for when we pick up Crista from the airport Sunday. It surely sounds like she's been having fun out in the Mojave! ;D

That's all for today, folks!

Work work work

2004-07-29T00:32:00.000-04:00

Well, the root beer is in the fridge after being in a "warm place" (the stove top) for two days. It's really neat how much the water jug I put it in has expanded. Too bad a hole popped in the handle, but I think it maintained enough pressure even so. Duct tape is wonderful! ;)

Peppered in this blog are some photos of what we've done in the cabin so far. Hope you like them!

Tomorrow is my last day at Subway! It has been fun, but Crista is coming Sunday and I want to spend time with her and Uncle David. Besides going to Yellowstone Monday - Thursdayish. I'd like to take her hiking up where we rode those horses the other day... you know... the place with those streams and waterfalls. It would also be neat to go back up to Red Hill and see if all the wildflowers are still in bloom. And there's always the hustle and bustle of downtown Pinedale, population 1400. ;)

Speaking of Subway, two girls I took an order from today made a big deal of leaving me a "tip" of 13 cents. :) It was really quite funny. I felt like one of those cute little organ grinder monkeys getting a peanut! *sigh* To once again have such a high esteem for pocket change. ;)

Uncle David and I get to eat dinner at cousin Dave and Barbie's house tomorrow night! I'm getting off work around 4:00, and will head over to the library where Dave works to hang out until supper time. Their library is very beautiful and well-booked, especially considering the size of this town. It's nicer even than the Gibbs Library back home (which I think they're going to scrap in favor of a larger one near the new city center.)

Next Saturday, Crista, Uncle David, and I will all hopefully be out at the Cheyenne Regulators' monthly shoot in Cheyenne. This will be my first Cowboy Shoot! I have a shotgun now, but Uncle David is going to lend me the pistols and rifle. Best of all, we're doing it on my birthday! Yippee! 8)

The trip back to Boulder is a loooong one, however, so if we want to get in before 1:00am on Sunday morning, we should really leave before 4:00pm. Urgh. I'm really not sure how we're going to manage it, especially since I'm supposed to play for church. ()^_^

In other news, I'm steadily working my way through my A+ Certifcation guide book by Mike Meyers. It's a fun read! I'm hoping to take the exam sometime in the two weeks before school starts when I return to Georgia. I still need to call the testing company to discover whether the $145 fee covers BOTH sections of the test or only one, though. Mr. Ham is looking at taking the test too, I think.

Uncle David and I just finished watching a NOVA video I rented from the library about the Panama Canal. It was fascinating, despite NOVA's efforts to exacerbate the issue of race. They said that the average "black" worker made just 10 cents a day, while the lowest paid "white" worker got $250 a month. Even NOVA admitted that the "black" workers' pay was considered high. I mean, even assuming that they got two days off every week in an average 30-day month, they would still be making $220 a month! That is NOT a big gulf, especially considering that the "black" workers from Barbados and other countries were performing unskilled manual labor and the "white" workers were all doing jobs that required considerable training (engineers, nurses, clerks, etc.) Why must everything be about race?

Anyhoo... it was a lot of fun to watch, but I've pushed my bedtime as far as it should go. Farther, actually. It's 10:55 here, mountain time, so I bid you good night. :)

Camping, riding, and more electrical work

2004-07-26T18:06:00.000-04:00

Hey gang!

Sorry for the week-long or so silence. It's been a blast! Last weekend, Uncle David and I went camping with Dave and Barbie up past Red Cliff Bible Camp and had a great time. We didn't see a whole lot of wildlife bigger than a tree squirrel, but I did see some fresh moose er... tracks.

This weekend, we went riding on some of the Boulder Lake Lodge's horses up a trail into the Wind River mountains and into Bridger's Wilderness area. It was so beautiful! And I remembered my camera this time! ;)

Unfortunately, most of my pictures were a little blurry. I guess the horse bumped a lot more than I thought it did! It was a 3 hour ride to Lake Ethel and back. Everyone was telling me that the next morning I would be discovering muscles I never knew I had, but I felt fine! ("Ah, youth" quoth cousin Dave.)

Also this week, I got to work at Subway! It's been a lot of fun, but unfortunately, while this week is only my second week, it must also be my last. Crista will be flying in from Albuquerque after a (hopefully) successfull trip to Trona and Sequoia National Park (near Death Valley) to visit some friends. When Daniel and I were roommates, he told me a lot of stories about the surrounding landscape. I'm kind of jealous that I wasn't able to make it out there too, but I did of course get to spend all this time with my Uncle, which more than makes up for it! :)

So far today, I've done a bit more electrical work here at the house. I moved a light fixture over two studs so it was closer to the door, and added another fixture on the other side of the door off the same light switch. Also, I mostly installed two floor receptacles. Mostly because it's REALLY dark down in the crawlspace! It was pretty creepy at first, but I managed to get more or less comfortable down there. I wasn't able to complete the work because the light bulbs are connected to the same circuit that I need to connect the receptacles to -- the sump pump outlet. Nyargh! It's really dark and I don't think I can complete the wiring job without some sort of light -- we don't have a drop light here. I'm hoping Uncle David will feel up to holding the flashlight for me so I can connect it tonight. In the meantime, the two outlets are already wired and ready to go... I just have to drill some holes and screw them down to the floor. hehe ()^o^

Well, gotta go now... I'm going to experiment making some root beer with some concentrate I found in Faler's General Store. If it works, maybe I'll bring some to college and prep some for midterms and finals!

2004-07-15T15:19:00.000-04:00

ZZAAAPP!!

2004-07-15T15:09:00.000-04:00

Hey all!

I've been having great fun here at Uncle David's house installing electrical outlets. Receptacles and light switches are so easy to install! And fun too! Maybe Mom and Dad will let me install a couple dozen new ones at home. ;)

Hit my left index finger pretty hard with a hammer trying to get the box nailed into the stud, but despite a nice little gray spot and general numb feeling, I'm sure my finger will be fine in a couple weeks or so.

By the way, I've been enjoying the emails you guys have sent me... please keep sending!

The other day, we were in town again. I got to play the piano a little bit -- not as good a session as my first one, but oh well. :) I decided that there wasn't enough for me to do when I'm in town waiting for my uncle to get off work, so I went job hunting. You are now reading the rambles of a future Subway employee! ;D This should be interesting.

Pinedale Rendezvous

2004-07-12T01:18:00.000-04:00

More beautiful Wyoming shots:

I took these on the way to and way back from the Pinedale Rendezvous today. :) More on that later.

Church was pretty good today. They run things a little differently than I'm used to, but the people at Pinedale Bible Church sure seem to have their hearts in the right place. The pastor, Jim, delivered a good message on God giving everyone in the church the role of being a minister -- not just "the pastor." Also, he emphasized our total reliance on God for our needs and strength from Matthew chapter 10 where Jesus sends the apostles off with instructions to take nothing with them, but instead rely on Him.

After the service, Uncle David and I skittled over to Stockmans for what we thought would be a quick bite to eat before the Rendezvous pageant. Unfortunately, it took over half an hour to get our food and we arrived late. The pageant was still very good!

The Pinedale Rendezvous is a sort of festival started by the fur trappers who settled the region. Back then, it was a time to trade furs, guns, horses, and other commodities, but also a great time of fun! The pageant was a historical reenactment of the first rendezvous featuring a lot of Indians and horses.

Apparently, the first missionary in the Rockies (at least in this area) was a Jewish Jesuit priest. He was held in very high esteem by the native Shoshone Indians... perhaps even more so than the Protestant missionaries who came later.

Some very interesting vendors were there at the festival. Uncle David was dismayed that the root beer man didn't come this year. All the other vendors said that he promised to come next year, though. One tent I visited featured a large selection of wooden flutes. There were some very nice, large ones with a beautiful tone, but the salesman seemed more focused on finding his "inner music" than any classical applications. They were pretty inexpensive as far as they go, and I grabbed his business card for future reference in case the smaller one I bought for a dollar at another booth proves interesting.

Uncle David found a barnwood dresser he liked, and we just baaaarely squeezed it into the back of the camper -- some of the wood got scraped off :( -- and it was another adventure getting it out again and up the stairs in the house. It looks great in his room; it seems to almost have a blue tint and works nicely with the light, pine walls.

We were out in town most of the day, and I think my bread fermented too long back here at home. It tasted sort of like sourdough! *sigh* Well, I WAS thinking of making a starter. ;) I've been making the meals here to help free my uncle to do other tasks. So far I've gotten to make antelope chops with sauteed onions, and chilli con carne with cornbread. I wish we had kitchens at PCC!

That's all for now... but first, here's another Vegas picture:

Safety in Wooden Walls

2004-07-10T23:36:00.000-04:00

Hey gang! Uncle David and I hiked to Soda Lake this morning, and boy was it beautiful! Everything was so nice and green! I had never been in a Wilderness area before. My uncle brought a GPS device with us: I'd like to get one now, though since I don't really travel that much during most of the year, it would probably just happily blink the location of my PCC dorm room 24/7. It seems such a shame to prevent us hummings from using that wilderness land very much. For a while, they wouldn't even let in wheelchairs! But anyway, it was a great experience.!

On our way back, we met some of the neighbors in the area here. They're really nice people, and have lived here for upwards 25 years! Ken said that he was the one who originally made the trail we took (out of the original Indian trail) with his trusty chainsaw (before the Wilderness Act, of course.)

Returning from our little jaunt, we completed a little bit more work on the cabin. My uncle has sawn tongues and grooves into quite a few wooden boards for walls, and most still need to be put up; we connected and nailed just under a dozen today. We did, however, complete the upstairs bedroom, and get quite a bit of the existing walls coated with polyurethane sealer.

To change the subject, our drive out to Wyoming was absolutely marvelous. My Uncle thought I was really funny -- I had the window down and my head out almost the entire way! I was exclaiming at how beautiful Nevada was and he was just rolling his eyes. ;) Las Vegas was certainly a change from its sparse surroundings. I got a picture of the largest thermometer in the world in that state too, I think. :D

Well, it's time to turn in for the night. I'm going to my Uncle's church tomorrow morning. I went to the men's prayer breakfast on Friday and it seems like they're a really good gang.

Stay cool!

Alive and kickin'

2004-07-08T23:20:00.000-04:00

Hey Gang!

Yes, I've finally updated the blog! This is really the first time since I left from Georgia a couple weeks ago that I've been able to sit down and read my email. Here's a quick update with photos... I'll fill in all the details from the beginning of the trip up until now sometime later. :)

I'm currently in Boulder, WY at my Uncle's cabin. He's in our closest town Pinedale today. It's 25 miles of dirt road away, so it's usually a full day deal when we go to town. So far today, I've finished stapling the plastic sheeting we're using to block moisture in the attic and some on the inside front of the house. The front window faces east, and is almost the entire 20-foot height of the ceiling, and is almost as long as the wall as well, giving us not only a nice bright house in the morning, but also a beautiful view through the aspen trees of one the mountains closing in the valley.

I set up the computer today too! ;) Uncle David and I went to Idaho Falls and bought it for a good deal (with mail-in rebates) at Circuit City. Though one day the computer will reside up in closet in the loft, Uncle David said that we should put it in my room since we're still making a lot of sawdust and my room is one of the few rooms with a door. :D

Probably shouldn't be amazed, but connecting to the Internet here is not a local call. Sure, America Online has nearly a dozen numbers in Wyoming (har har) but they all seem to be over in Cheyenne or other heavily populated areas. To put things in perspective, the city Providence, Rhode Island has a greater population than all of Wyoming. The 307 area code covers the entire state!

Despite, or perhaps because of, its lack of people, I really like this place. It is incredibly beautiful. Even when you're out on the plains, you can see the Rocky Mountains in the distance.

Anyhoo... back to our trip to Idaho Falls, we also got to go to the Sportsman's Warehouse. Uncle David introduced me to Cowboy Action Shooting at a Regional Match in Cheyenne. I LOVE IT! It's so cool! Why do the guns have to be soooo expensive!? He's made me a really good deal on a 12 gauge shotgun, so now I just have to find a pair of 45 or 38 special pistols and a rifle. *sigh* This definitely looks like a "once I've graduated" hobby. I heard a story about a poor guy who had to send his sword collection back home after his floor leader discovered it under his bed. A wild guess tells me they'd react similarly to a shotgun. :)

The main reason for our trip out was actually to see Josh Prenevost. He was singing with his ensemble in Afton (about 120 miles away from Pinedale.) He looked surprised to see me. ;) He seems to be having a good time, and also seems to be enjoying all the new scenery. He mentioned that he had seen Janee when they went through Oregon(?). I'm hoping that once they're done meandering around the east side of WY, they'll hop back and visit the church in Pinedale we're going to.

Speaking of church, tomorrow (Friday), Uncle David and I are planning to go to the men's breakfast. This will be the first actual time that I've gone to this church. My Dad's cousin Barbie and her husband Dave go there too, and seem friendly, good Christian people. It doesn't look like I'll have to worry about the church being "like Mormons". ;D

After the breakfast, I will hopefully be able to try out their grand piano. Just like email, I haven't touched a piano since leaving Augusta. My right wrist really hurts just now from sanding three dining room chairs, but I'm hoping a little asprin, water, sleep, and stretching excercises will get it better for tomorrow. :)

Will update again soon. I have a lot of pictures, but I managed to run out of room, so I don't have any digital pictures of after we crossed Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. It's a real shame, because there was a lot to see at the Cowboy Shoot!

>^o^< Thanks for watching! >^o^<

Leaving for California tomorrow morning!

2004-06-20T23:22:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm finally all packed and ready to go! Really got to go to sleep now as we must wake up @ 4:00 and leave by 5:00 to be at the airport at 7:00 for my flight at 9:00. If everything goes according to schedule, I should arrive at LAX around 11:00 PST. This is so cool! 8D

Neat Links:
Radio Frequency-Blocking Wallpaper
New Subatomic Particle
First Private Space Rocket Launced
Indonesia Orders Pirates, Sea Terrorists Shot on Sight

---
After Eight Years, Man Takes Elevator to Freedom
Fri Jun 18, 1:45 PM ET
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (Reuters) - A frail 89-year-old Trinidadian man left his apartment for the first time in eight years this week after broken elevators in the government-owned building were finally replaced.
Local newspapers reported Thursday that Randolph Hall had been forced to stay in his eighth-floor apartment for years because he did not have the strength to go up and down so many flights of stairs.
After taking his first ride down the new elevator on Wednesday, accompanied by Trinidadian Housing Minister Keith Rowley, Hall said he was thankful.

---
German 'Samurai' on the Loose in Woods Near Berlin
Fri Jun 18, 1:48 PM ET
BERLIN (Reuters) - A camouflage-clad German man wielding a samurai sword attacked at least seven hikers in forests west of Berlin, performing sword tricks before ordering them to leave the woods, police said Friday.
They suspect a 46-year-old local man who trained in martial arts and survival skills in camps in Papua New Guinea and Vietnam to be the attacker.
"He's dangerous and has been hard to find because he wears camouflage," said Catrin Feistauer, spokeswoman for the Nauen police department. Police have used infrared cameras mounted on helicopters to try and track him down.
The man pushed two elderly people off their bikes and, flashing his sword, shouted at them to leave the forest. He later tried to drive a young couple out of the woods. No one was seriously hurt.
"It's frightening because the violence level has increased each time," Feistauer said.

Brain transplant and ... retraining! }:)

2004-06-19T01:36:00.000-04:00

Hey, ya'll!

I've transferred a good portion of the contents of my hard drives (about 15 gigabytes as of right now) across the network to Mom's new computer! I had been backing up all of my data on CD-Rs, but I realized it would be too expensive to complete the process. I had burned 15 CDs before coming to this realization. 8O Windows has just given me too much guff this school year. There was a time when it wouldn't boot up right, and it STILL won't let me use my CD-ROM drives! Thank goodness I have Linux on this PC too! I'm going to wipe the sucker clean and install Mandrake Linux 10.0 exclusively -- none of this dual-boot nonsense anymore!

Speaking of brains, I've been looking at neural networks in the past few days. Neural networks are based on observations of the interactions in real human or animal brains. Each nerve cell is essentially a little processor, and has a lot of fault tolerance when it comes to processing signals. While I really don't like statistical modelling when it comes to language, I can't help but think that some of the techniques I've been reading about could be useful in at least PART of my diagramming program. It's neat how so many new, but related ideas start popping into your head when you read this stuff! Kinda fascinating the idea that the computer itself can find patterns in your data without you specifically telling it what to find!

Crista, Charlotte, and I went grocery shopping tonight for a grand Fathers' Day feast we are going to prepare for him. We poked and prodded a whole buch of meat! Looking over past the cow and pig, I saw the price tag on lamb. So expensive! Why do all the really good-tasting things have to be that way!? It would be so cool to raise sheep! Too bad the neighborhood covenants -- and county zoning -- expressly forbid keeping livestock.

I found my camera! Someone had put it on top of Mom's book by the front door. Here are a couple pictures: straight out of the box from Newegg, and one of it in *deep echoing voice* OPERATION.

That's all for today! I had had a vain wish of getting to bed before 12:00 tonight, but I guess I watched too much Stargate among other things. ;D

Gnight!

Computer fixed!

2004-06-18T13:30:00.000-04:00

As of this evening, I have finished reading 68.6% of my Java 2: A Beginner's Guide book! It's been a lot of fun, and I can't wait until I get to Module 11 on Multithreading! (I just finished Module (chapter) 8 tonight.) Crista's house and dogsitting for some friends. :) She just donated 10 inches of hair to Locks of Love, so now everyone here has shoulder length hair or less (not counting the pets, of course.)

Grandma and I took Princess Fluffy to a new vet today. It was extremely close and convenient, and they fixed her up so quickly! We were all shocked at how much larger she was after our Massachusetts trip. One night while we were gone, she decided to play around and knocked over her food bag. She spent most the night chowing down until Grandma discovered her the next morning... :D In the end, we decided to buy her some Purina ONE instead of her normal cat chow to take care of an irritating dry skin problem. The vet says "one cup a day MAXIMUM!" much to kitty's chagrin. ;D

Can't seem to find my digital camera, and it's a shame, because I had a couple nifty photos of my new PC case running. Hrmph. Oh well! I'll just have to wait until tomorrow. I should really start packing for Wyoming soon... I'm leaving on Monday morning at 5:00! The flight actually leaves at 9:00, but of course one must be there hours ahead of time, and Atlanta is 2 1/2 hours away from here. Dad is letting me take his Canon camera with me, so I get to play around with the macro and telephoto lenses! Maybe I'll get to shoot an elk out in Wyoming after all!

Fixed my computer

2004-06-17T02:31:00.000-04:00

Well, my computer case arrived today via FedEx. If you're not a computer geek, you can safely skip these first two paragraphs. ;) I'm really pleased with Newegg.com's quick shipping and low price. I got a fairly nice case for a total of $46 including shipping. It didn't take very long to get here either! I ordered the case online Sunday night, and it got here Wednesday afternoon with neither special shipping options nor extra money for Newegg to "expedite" my order.

The case has a clear side panel so you can see all your computer's innards (and soon, probably the dust that will collect as I neglect it at school.) In the center of the window, it has a neon fan which glows red/blue/purple serving both to keep me up at night (not that I need it's help ;D) and to prevent my system from overheating again. In my old case, the CPU was running easily over 100 degrees Fahrenheit! I took some photos, so I'll put them up tomorrow sometime. :)

I sat in with the teens again at the assembly. Mark went over angelology from the Bible Doctrines For Today book published by (surprise!) A Beka Book. I think Crista is the one that suggested it. I'm slated to take it next semester as a night class, and am really looking forward to it now that I've had an opportunity to take a look at some of the material.

Speaking of Bible doctrines, Dad talked to Uncle David in Wyoming yesterday (Tuesday,) and it sounds like Uncle David has been going to the same church that some of my other relatives (Dad's Dad's brother's daughter and family whom I've never met) are attending. He says that they're "Southern Baptist, but a sorta like Mormons." :O

Uncle David says it would be okay for me to practice on their grand piano while I'm out there. :) I've been enjoying playing the piano so far this summer and am fairly pleased with the progress of my Schubert piece.

Rounding this post off with more geekiness, it looks like there have been a couple more experiments on entanglement. In tandem with the German quantum computer simulator[translation from German], perhaps quantum computer development will progress faster than anticipated! I just finished downloading the three CD set of Mandrake Linux 10.0! I'm so excited! I'm going to finish backing up all of my data off of my computer Tilde, and then I'm going to wipe both hard drives and run exclusively Linux! I already have all of the applications I'll need (like StarOffice and WINE.) I'm planning on running Windows inside a virtual machine and dedicating one hard drive to just Windows files to be accessed from outside the virtual machine. This way, if Windows crashes, I'll only need to reinstall it inside the virtual machine, and all of my application files won't even need to be restored from a backup!

Ahh, technology! :*) AAAHH!! Look at the time! I've got to take Grandma's cat to the vet tomorrow! Good night!

Monday

2004-06-15T00:41:00.000-04:00

I ran across an interesting piece in the BBC today... Invisibility cloaks! They're still in the developing stages, of course. Mostly, the creator is looking for applications such as letting crowded cube-dwellers enjoy the outdoors without having an actual window. While this seems a hideously expensive alternative to me, I guess the Japanese go for this kind of solution. After all, in all of the Godzilla movies I've ever seen, instead of building a giant wall around Tokyo, or perhaps creating some other giant monster deterrant, they simply rebuild the city instantaneously the next day.

I guess it's good for the economy! ;D

The good news is PCC will have email and limited Internet access this fall. I'm hoping to maintain contact with all you folks once I get to school! I should still be accessible via masyukun@hotpop.com, though.

I'm really beginning to itch for Wyoming. I cannot WAIT until I can get to work! Keep in touch!

Back! And fully charged!

2004-06-14T00:12:00.000-04:00

Hey Gang!

We just arrived this evening from our two-day trip from Massachusetts. It was mostly uneventful. I finished a Babylon 5 novel and read up to page 307-ish in my Java 2 book. I tell you! That Java book is so GOOD! After having Dr. Howell for C++ this past semester, this book is pure sugar puff! :D I greatly appreciate Dr. Howell's thoroughness covering the material. He is almost the only teacher I rarely have questions for after the lecture. Herbert Schildt, the author of Java 2: A Beginner's Guide (click the link! the book was only $4.50 last I saw!) is the same guy who wrote our textbook, C++ The Complete Reference. I'm keeping both books, needless to say. ;D Tonight, I also purchased a new computer case and power supply so perhaps I can repair my computer even before I leave for Wyoming ... though I seriously doubt it.

Computery-stuff aside, Addie's wedding this coming Saturday will unquestionably be the best thing since sliced cheese! I can't really believe it's happening! It seems like just yesterday when we were all singing Christmas carols house to house and in the road late at night. :*) Congratulations, you guys!

Well, sleep becons to me, and while I think I can hold out against it for a couple more hours, it's time to end this blog. ;D 'Till next time!

Leaving for home!

2004-06-12T01:21:00.000-04:00

We're leaving for home tomorrow morning! I'm busily packing here, both my luggage and all of the files I've been working on here on my uncle's computer.

*sits on suitcase*

Just...

*struggles with handles*

about.....

*suitcase EXPLODES open!*

DONE!

~~~Argh~~~ ()^_^

Cleaned and saw Uncle Bill

2004-06-10T23:29:00.000-04:00

Today we cleaned up the house a little bit -- especially the breezeway where the kitties have been staying. Charlotte did an excellent job mopping the floor and dusting, while I lent moral support to Dad who was mounting the 10 CD changer in the Explorer. ;)

Later, we drove out to Freetown and visited a while with Uncle Bill. He's building a concrete house with those styrofoam molds. It's turning out quite nicely, actually. Concrete is a good insulator, so winters should be nice and cheap. It was really hot yesterday (almost 90 degrees,) but today was beautifully cool around 70, I think. He said that the basement of his house has been 40 degrees ever since winter! 8O

Other than that, the cats are getting bigger again. Two of them got into a hissy-fit over the food dish tonight. That's all the excitement up here. I'm going to bed now so I can watch Reagan's funeral tomorrow morning. (I think it's at 10:30am, but you can never be too prepared.)

Old news, but good news

2004-06-10T00:31:00.000-04:00

Hey gang! I forgot to post a message yesterday despite the thrilling updated photos of the kittens. (Yes, how COULD I!) I don't think it's my imagination -- Charlotte was remarking on it too -- they seem bigger than they were yesterday! The gray ones are now almost exactly the same size, but the black one is just slightly larger than before.

They are really growing on me! Tonight, two of them decided just to walk on top of me and fall asleep while we were watching President Reagan's wake. The kittens really love to climb! I was out in the yard yesterday with everyone and the gray one climbed up my leg and arm to sit on top of my head. Maybe I could sneak one of them back with me to school!

In other news, the trap caught another possum. I really have no clue whether we'll ever get a racoon. Those pesky critters keep breaking into the greenhouse, smashing pots and vases, and shredding or eating valuable plants.

I bought a puzzle at Building #19, and we've been working on it off and on. I got the one that looked the most difficult (an old city scene) and got more than I bargained for. The easiest part of this puzzle was the sky. }:/ I never knew that muddy streets could be so tricky to piece together!

Uncle Eddie came up from New Jersey and visited with us today. It was really good to see him again. He completed the horse painting he was working on when we last saw him, and has started all sorts of new, ambitious projects.

I finished a book today: The Dilbert Principle, by Scott Adams. On a scale from 1 to 10, I rate it "ok." I enjoyed the comic strips that spruced its pages, but it seemed a bit whiny to me after the first couple chapters. He made some interesting points though. At the end of the book, he proposed a new management plan in which the company that doesn't bug its employees with "motivation" or special awards and programs intended to boost creativity, and lets them go home at 5:00. *yawn*

Time to get back to my Java 2 book! So many neat ideas keep popping into my head while reading that book. Got to find a notebook...

Kittens

2004-06-07T23:13:00.000-04:00

Hey all! Aunt Charlotte and my sister Charlotte went out for ice cream earlier today, and came back with a three kittens! Someone was giving them away just down the road. They're really cute, but Uncle Kyle doesn't seem very happy about having them here. ;) Aunt Charlotte promises she'll come Thursday to choose her kitten, and I guess Aunt Betty is planning on keeping the other two. Midge (their current cat of 17 years) doesn't like them at all -- every time they get near she hisses.

Too bad there's no way we could talk Dad into getting another cat (even though there are still four more back where they got these... and they're FREE!)

yaaaaaaaawn ^o^

2004-06-07T12:09:00.000-04:00

These past few days have been nice and sleepy. Haven't done much except eat, sleep, and listen to Brahms.

Charlotte and I have been playing chess and checkers a bit, but my reading seems to have gone on hold. I think I'll pick my Java 2 book up again. Our last checkers game, Charlotte and I reached a stalemate without hopping any pieces with the have-to-jump rule. It was really weird. I'll post a picture later.

Have a swell day!

Waxed the boat, forgot camera

2004-06-04T23:43:00.000-04:00

Hey, All!

Today, Charlotte and I got up semi-early to help my Aunt Charlotte with her new 30-foot sailboat. First we gave it a good scrub down, then after it dried we applied a restorative coating that's supposed to fix all the little dings and scratches the previous owners of the boat left her with and buffed all that mess off. And finally, we got the actual wax on and off.

We got Dunkin Doughnuts coolatas and a nice lunch out of the deal... and some quality time with our aunt, of course! :)

Mom and Dad went to Providence, RI for Waterfire, a big annual festival with large braziers in the water, and all sorts of good food and entertainment. It sounded like fun!